


Prisoners Of Our Own Device

by propergoffick



Series: A Sense Of Fatal Allegiance [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Addiction, Breaking and Entering, Cheating, Disease, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Disputes, Domestic Violence, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Murder, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Bondage, One Night Stands, Past Rape/Non-con, Santa Monica Dream, Vampire Bites, Vampires, tripping balls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:26:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffick/pseuds/propergoffick
Summary: Rachel and Chloe finally get out of Arcadia Bay, and they're living the dream just like they planned - but it's not all wine and poses on the pier. It's no money, and no truck, and creepy neighbours, and you know what the worst thing is, about living in Santa Monica?All the damn vampires.





	1. there she stood in the doorway

"This is _hella_ skeezy."

Chloe - who’s literally slept in a junkyard and spent the last night in her truck, so it’s not like she has high standards - looks around the apartment. It’s some ill shit. What isn’t grey with damp is slick with grease. Slabs of chipboard have been nailed behind the windows - on the inside, they’re crawling with faded psychedelic swirls of spray paint.

While Rachel opens doors - cupboards, TV cabinet, tiny bathroom - Chloe’s taking stock. Desk: in the corner, framed by windows she can’t see through. No chair. Bed: with a grimy mattress sagging half off and half through the iron frame. Refrigerator: also known as ‘cheap steak graveyard’, by the look of the stains on every single shelf.

It’s a testament to Rachel’s acting talent that she almost hides her own scowl, between opening the bathroom door and closing it again.

"What if… we burn it down and start over?" Rachel throws her bag onto the least sticky square yard of carpet she can see, and collapses onto that.

“Can’t. We spent all my money on gas and all your money on this shitbox. If you want insurance, someone’s selling a kidney.”

“Riiight. And yours are fucked, and I’m too pretty for scars.” Rachel laughs at her own joke, and Chloe grins back. It’s a shitbox, but it’s a shitbox _here_ , and she’s here, and Rachel’s here, and she’s so fucking beautiful that nothing else seems real.

Chloe realises she’s staring. She finally drops her gym bag and walks into their apartment - theirs, together - and she wraps her arms round Rachel’s head and holds it tight against her hips and for a moment they’re on stage at Blackwell again, and someone behind the lights screams ‘say yes!’ and Chloe does, with all her heart, and means it.

Rachel nuzzles into her, and then says, through a face full of flannel shirt, “Defk.”

“Sexy says what?”

“I said _desk_.” Rachel twists her head to one side. “C’mon. Maybe there’s something in there. We live above a pawn shop now.”

“Ah, the Santa Monica dream. It’s everything I hoped it would be.” They disengage. Chloe holds out her hands and tugs Rachel to her feet. Rachel leads her to the desk, and Chloe cranes over her shoulder as she struggles with the drawers. One sticks, like it hasn’t been opened for years, and it’s empty but for a few pill bottles that barely even rattle and a shitty watch, copied from a copy of a copy of a fake. The top one doesn’t shift at all.

“Shit.”

“Watch the master at work.” Chloe reaches inside the lower drawer, twisting awkwardly around Rachel - anything but ask her to move, though in a second or two she takes the hint and sidesteps - and rattles the drawer in its place, working her fingers into the ratchet at the back. It gives, with a sudden snap, and Chloe pulls her bloodied fingers out and shakes them. “Fuck!”

“You hurt yourself?” Rachel takes her hand, touches Chloe’s fingers to her lips. Her heart skips a beat - how could it not? - but it _is_ kinda gross, especially when Rachel’s tongue slips around her fingertips and laps just a tiny, tiny bit. Hot, but gross.

“Hey. Friends don’t give friends hepatitis.”

Rachel smiles, lets go of her hand, and holds her gaze for a fraction of a second longer before she turns, impish, and slides the top drawer open. “Far be it from me to question the master thief. So… what do we have here?”

The drawer’s full of folders, clipboards, notebooks, and a few scraps wedged deep down in the corner. Rachel rifles through the detritus, Chloe behind her, one hand resting between the piles she’s already dubbed ‘worthless’ and ‘mostly worthless’.

“Drivers license. Bail bond.”

“Bad boy.” Chloe shuffles them both into ‘worthless’.

“Mm-hmm. Business cards… oh hey, jackpot.”

Stuffed at the very bottom and the very back of the desk is a purse - cheap, battered, and overstuffed with what, judging by Rachel’s face, isn’t money.

“Or not. Two thousand four diary.”

Chloe shrugs. “Better than a kick in the ass. C’mon. Let’s go downstairs, pawn some of this junk. Maybe we can live the dream with a whooole burrito.”

* * *

 

They open the door straight on to their neighbour - or at least to a guy standing in the doorway of 507.

He's small, but toned, and nervous, with scruffy brown hair down to his collar and dark circles under his eyes. No shirt under the pale, green, hospital scrubs, and he might look decent if he got about six years’ sleep. Shame about the voice; it’s stilted, sing-song, distant, and comes coupled with a creepy shit-eating smile at Rachel as she tugs Chloe’s hand and leads her out.

"Ah, shit. You see me, Jane Doe?"

"Excuse you?"

His gaze flickers up to Chloe, and down. Avoidant. Defiant. "You too, Firebird? You want to watch out. You can't keep coming back forever."

"How fucking high are you?"

"Sky high. Higher than you'll ever go. Never close to the sun, though. Never there." He laughs. It’s a horrible sound, bubbling out of his lungs, pure horror movie. The kind of laugh a badly-disguised serial killer laughs.

“See? He’s just blazing.” Chloe rolls her eyes right as Rachel flashes her a glance - almost like they planned it, and Rachel probably did. “Pun intended.”

"See that happy shining face? You'll always end up screaming, little blue.”

"Are you fucking _threatening_ us?"

He sways, clutches his doorframe, and shakes his head, as though Chloe actually hit him, and didn’t just lunge and check herself.

“I don’t make threats, Little Miss Badass. I’m stating a fact of life, and death. You can take the hint, or not. Every bullet hurts; the last round kills.”

“OK, Mister Cryptic.” Rachel folds her arms, looking him up and down properly. “Here’s one for you: creepers die alone.”

Chloe bites down on her snigger, but she can’t keep the grin inside, or herself from joining in. “Alone; unloved; unremembered; jerking off in dark alleyways.”

He snorts. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He slams the door behind him; maybe Chloe’s imagining it, but it feels like dust falls, like the crappy plastic potplant at the end of the hall quivers to the roots it doesn’t have. Suddenly, she’s so glad she didn’t take the shot.

“Man. He has one hell of a crankin’-it arm.” Chloe rubs her forehead, leaning back against their door.

“Must have been something we said.” Rachel holds out a loose fist, and it’s not like Chloe can leave her hanging; she bumps it. “Good work. Let’s go.”

She’s halfway down the corridor before Chloe’s standing up straight, bobbing along in her wake, giving one last look over her shoulder as they turn the hall corner and head downstairs.

The door to 507 stays resolutely closed, but Chloe keeps looking back.

* * *

 

The pawnshop guy is nearly as baked as their freaky neighbour. He reminds Chloe of Justin, and she comes down on that trace of homesickness hard. So what if she knows a guy like him? There’s a stoner guy like him in every teen movie, maybe every town for all she knows.

He’s propped up behind a wire grille, like everything else in his store. Chloe and Rachel are pinned in a circle of flourescent light, caged on every side - even behind. Inside the main door there’s a kind of elevator-sized wire basket with another door, that doesn’t open until the big one’s closed. This shitty pawnshop full of Windows XP manuals and cheap costume jewelery feels weirdly high security, and it doesn’t suit the guy behind the counter. There’s a fear in him that he’s drowning out with the herb, and she can work with that.

“Hey, man.”

He blinks, almost like he’s only just noticed them walk in. “Hey. You, uh, you buyin’, or… ?”

“Selling.” Rachel tips their haul onto the desk. He rustles their loot around on his desk, holds the watch up to the light, riffs through the diary, and something falls out. It takes him whole seconds to register it and turn it around, and he stares at it for seconds more.

“Where’d you get this stuff?” he says at last, his attention obviously fading in and out.

“What’s it to you?” Rachel asks him - okay, she’s playing hardball, so Chloe switches mental gears, ready to give him the out. Is she getting the hang of this improv shit? “You think we stole it?”

“Nah, nah, I… I knew this girl,” he explains, turning the scrap around. It’s a photo - an actual physical photo, worn at the edges and scored down the middle like it’s been folded. A redheaded girl in a tie-dye top, standing on a beach at night, underlit by a good old-fashioned oil drum fire. “Lily. Came down here from… Oregon.”

“No shit. Us too.” Chloe hooks her fingers into the wire and takes a closer look at the photo. It’s signed - good thing, Trip’s memory probably needed the boost. A handful of other figures lounge around the edge of the firelight. Probably the photographer just chased them out: some people take over the world when they have a chance to take a shot, and some people let the world take over and let the shot take them, and Chloe hurls that thought into her (overflowing) mental garbage can marked ‘Max Caulfield And All Who Sail In Her’ before it can get her down.

“Yah… she disappeared in… like, oh-four. Everyone said the, uh, the Southland Slasher got her, but I had a customer said she knew better. Said that about everything. _Weird_ motherfucker.”

“Speaking of weird motherfuckers,” Chloe says, nodding and smiling, settling in to the all-potheads-together routine, “what’s with that guy in 507?”

“Vandal? Man, he’s… he works across the street, at the medical centre. Night porter. I don’t think he’s seen daylight since the Nineties. Why’d you ask?”

“New neighbour,” Chloe explains. “We just moved in across the hall.”

“Sweet. Well, uh, welcome to Santa Monica. I’m Trip.”

“Chloe. This is Rachel.”

“You guys…” Trip’s free hand waves awkwardly in the air, leaving the question hanging. Fuck. Chloe _wants_ to say yes, once she’s untied the word from whatever deep place in her throat it’s tied itself into, but Rachel gets there first, as ever.

“Seeking our fortune.” She bats her eyes, and for a fraction of a fragment of a second Chloe curses her and realises she’s still guessing, still running to keep up, still off guard as Rachel changes the rules of whatever game she’s playing. If she didn’t think she could get ahead… if they hadn’t ended up here, because Chloe dared to call her bluff… if she wasn’t _Rachel freaking Amber_ , it would really piss her off.

“Sweet. Lemme know if you find it, ‘cause… it ain’t here.” Trip paws through the debris in his hands again. “This stuff… it’s junk, y’know? Ancient history.” Chloe tightens her grip on the wire, just a little, and Rachel leans in a little further, catching his gaze with her biggest and saddest eyes before it bounces away. Teamwork, man. “But… I like you guys, so… here’s the deal. Twenty bucks, and hit the Surfside Diner on second. Dinner on my tab. Say hi to Doris for me.”

* * *

 

“You know what we should do?” says Rachel, in between mouthfuls of (sigh) greasy diner food _so_ worth an eleven hour drive and tearing up your whole life.

Chloe stabs a hash brown like it’s personally offended her - to be fair, these hash browns are offensive - and considers the matter. “Nope.”

“Paint this town red.”

“On twenty bucks?”

“Yeah.”

“On our _only_ twenty bucks?”

“Yeah!”

“You’re fucking crazy,” says Chloe, as the unattended potato mush topples from the end of her fork.

Retrieving it gives her something to do with her face that isn’t ‘flip her shit’, and she’s suddenly grateful for this dive of a diner, on this drab street, just off the boulevard of dreams Rachel seems bent on breaking. A little annoyance, something _real_ that she has to deal with, gives her somewhere to plant her feet while Rachel’s one-girl whirlwind tears up everything else in the world, and being mad at that spares Chloe being mad at her. Isn’t this what they wanted? Isn’t this literally, entirely, why she loves Rachel to begin with?

“Am not. Listen, you.” Rachel settles in, leaning into Chloe’s eyeline and doing this _thing_ with her eyebrows that’s half insolent and half salacious. “We didn’t come this far for quiet nights in, listening to Vandal-in-507 jerk off over mondo movies or whatever sick shit he’s into. We came to live the dream and tear up this town, so let’s get out and do it.”

Chloe starts to say ‘we didn’t come out here to fuck this up’, but before she’s halfway through deciding where that sentence is even going, Rachel’s hands are closed around her cheeks and Rachel’s lips are closed on hers and even if she tastes of cheap gritty diner waffles she makes them taste like heaven. Chloe’s heart flutters harder than her eyelids, and together they slow and still and shut down until Rachel pulls away, half an eternity later.

“Are you gonna do that every time I dare to question you?” she finally manages to say, once time has started up again and the world’s fallen into place and the hoodie-indoors edgelord sitting alone by the payphone has shaken his head and gone back to the Camus novel he’s pretending to read.

“Are you gonna make me?” Rachel props her chin on her hands, staying low and close. Chloe sighs, nibbling at her lower lip, and brushes her free hand’s worth of fingertips through Rachel’s hair - down to chest height, and she slips two ten-dollar bills from Rachel’s pocket and fans them out.

“Split the difference. Ten bucks tonight. Ten bucks tomorrow.”

“How much fun do you think we can have on ten bucks, in Santa Monica?”

“If Rachel Freaking Amber has to pay for her own drinks anywhere on God’s clean Earth…”

Rachel smirks, relaxing her hands and leaning back, plucking one bill from between Chloe’s fingers and ever-so-faintly touching their tips, and Chloe groans and smiles back. “Challenge accepted. Prepare to be humiliated, designated driver.”

“Hey. _Hey_. That wasn’t the deal. Anyway: can’t drive. No gas.”

“Okay, so we start local. How about that place?” Rachel points over Chloe’s shoulder, and she cranes around and up to check out the tallest building on the street - four floors of arches and tall windows, the uppermost in darkness, the rest already faintly glowing a slightly freakish neon pink. The sign, stark in its dark and white between the third and fourth storeys, reads ‘The Asylum’.

“I sense _hella_ goth drama in our future. How much black eyeliner did you bring?”

* * *

 

The Asylum is everything Chloe’s expected, and less. It’s a hollowed-out old movie theatre, scratched and worn by years of spiky heels and combat boots, wallpapered in posters for identikit bands. How many pale, ethereal girl singers fronting for surly sub-rock guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb? _Actually, we prefer the dark._

There are a _lot_ of dark corners in here. Lights pulse and flicker, migraine-bright, over a dancefloor where the seats used to be, and a stage where the screen used to be, and a bar where the ticket office used to be - but they come and go, and what they mostly do is highlight the holes and corners behind speaker stacks or under the balcony. The Asylum’s full of hiding places.

As for [the music](https://youtu.be/FMMvQpjmSSs)… it’s got a beat. You could dance to it, if you didn’t mind dancing in slow-mo. Maybe that’s what’s with the giant shoes - slowing them the fuck down so they don’t start having fun? It’s all synthetic - bumps, squeaks, throbs, and a dead-inside European-sounding girl dropping deep thoughts like she doesn’t give a shit if you care or not.

> _Time is like a bullet from behind_  
>  _I run for cover, just like you_  
>  _Time is like a liquid in my hands_  
>  _I swim for dry land, just like you_  
>  _Time is just a fiction of my mind_  
>  _I will survive, and so will you_  
>  _And so will you_  
>  _And so will you_

The girl’s voice dissolves in carefully engineered skips. Chloe looks down the length of her arm, to Rachel’s hand, and back up. They’ve raided their bags for the blackest rags they had to hand - fucking hell, two minutes in this place and Chloe’s already thinking in bad poetry. Abort mission! They look… okay, they look like fashion victims, if Chloe’s a hundred per cent honest with herself, and she’d bet hella cash money on Rachel having stolen those pointy boots from Drama Lab, but whatever, they’re not even the worst dressed people here tonight and this is another award-winning Rachel Amber Plan that will totally work if they just… see it through.

Besides, most of the eyes in the place are not on them. Chloe follows Rachel’s gaze to the dancefloor, to a spot just below the stage.

"Fuck. Me."

The woman dancing - occupying centre stage without doing anything so crass as being on it - is probably about Rachel’s height, but between the platforms and the pigtails and the sheer projective force that radiates off her, she looks like a giantess. And, to be fair to Rachel, and to three quarters of the people in the Asylum tonight, she’s stacked. Her… underboob-corset-whateverthefuck looks _impossibly_ tight - it’s amazing she can breathe in that getup, let alone dance, and it’s making a full-on hourglass of her. Chloe still snaps her fingers on the edge of Rachel’s vision - and in the corner of her eye, the dancer twirls and turns, breaking a contact Chloe wasn’t quite sure was there.

"Eyes on the Price, Rachel."

“Oh, come on. You were staring too.”

Chloe pokes out her tongue. “You think she has room for three in her coffin?”

“One way to find out.”

The song bleeps, crashes, and drones its way into a beat of barely-there quiet, the next gliding in smoothly; something heavier that growls in off the back of blended keyboard beeps and boops. The dancing girl rolls her head - probably her eyes too - and stalks off the floor. Rachel hops onto the bar footrest and makes goo-goo eyes at the tattooed bulk behind it; Chloe’s only half-listening until a bottle of Tecate slides into her hand. Her attention was focused upward, onto the balcony that curves around the Asylum’s rear wall. There’s something up there that’s nagging at her attention, sucking it in the way a loose tooth attracts the tongue. Something she can’t see but should be able to; something she can feel but not quite pick out; something that distracts her from how fast she’s drinking. She’s halfway through the bottle before the song is over.

Rachel’s “You OK?” intertwines with another intervention on her reverie (what is it about this place that’s getting into her head and making her think shit like that?). The dancing girl’s planted a boot on the bar footrest, between Chloe and Rachel, and she’s looking from one to the other with a broad smile. She’s not even broken a sweat, and if her pallor’s makeup, it’s a fucking work of art.

“Well _hello_ , beautiful.” Her eyes flicker from Rachel to Chloe and back again. Who’s she talking to? Either? Both? Her voice is smooth, and syrupy - it sounds the way cough medicine tastes, complete with a slightly sickly undertone and that sense of relief that something’s finally slipped down and settled your throat. “ _So_ glad you’re not drinking only with thine eyes.”

“We’re on a low budget tonight,” Rachel practically purrs back; Chloe turns her double-take into a roll of the eyes. Her drama queen can never say no to a challenge. “You know how it is; new in town, not a penny to our names. Help a sister out?”

“Oh, would that I could, sweetmeat, but my sister gets so _crabby_ when I give the goods away!” The dancer licks her lips - a quick left to right and back again, and then her wide, slick smile closes. “And your guardian angel’s looking furious already. Hell hath no fury like a bluebird scorned…”

Chloe bites her tongue - almost literally. Something about this woman is getting to her, turning her thoughts sour - she keeps wanting to stare and look away at the same time. She takes a long pull on her drink, steadying herself, squeezing the cold glass tight until she has some focus back. “God, Rachel. Is everyone in Santa Monica tripping balls, or have we just been unlucky?”

“Oh, don’t be jealous, duckling! Never would I _ever_ come between you. Some people are just forever.” The dancer clasps her hands over her chest, tips her head, bats her eyes and smiles just a little bit too hard. The one thing she doesn’t do is actually move. “But forever is such a long, long time, and most of it hasn’t even happened yet…”

Chloe tips her head, looks the girl up and down, and frowns. “You should publish: The Little Book of Gothy Bullshit, by A. Fashion Victim.”

The girl’s head bobs back, and she focuses on Chloe properly for the first time, looking at her and through her, like she’s reading a script off the back of Chloe’s skull. Her eyes are off-colour - they almost look like they belong to different people. One’s green, and a little feline - one’s blue and crystal clear.

“ _Rude, dude!_ ” she laughs, in a passable impression of Chloe’s accent. For a fragment of a fraction of a second Chloe sees the blonde pigtails turn blue, sees her own face looking back at her, ashen-white and wearing a lascivious pout she’d never sink to putting on her own lips. “And it’s Jeanette, by the way.” The moment passes; Jeanette’s face is her own again, and Chloe’s falling off her stool, scrabbling as the world falls back into place. Rachel looks across to her, blinks, and slides off her own stool, like she’s been freeze-framed and restarted.

“What the hell did you do to her?”

Jeanette laughs - no, giggles, like an overgrown schoolgirl, pigtails bobbing. “Rawr! Nothing a competent psychiatrist can’t fix, little lioness!” She steps off at last, flashing a mouthful of sharp, pretty, perfect teeth. “But don’t worry. Tampering with possessions is a state offence, and I’m never offensive.”

Suddenly serious, she looks straight into Rachel’s eyes, and says something Chloe misses as she clambers to her feet. All the colour seems to fade from Rachel’s face, all the fight seems to drain out of her and into the floor Chloe’s still half stuck to. She backs away, sets her drink on the bar (where it sways, circles, and finally topples), and storms out.

Chloe hasn’t seen her give up without a fight in years. She scrambles after Rachel, glaring over her shoulder at Jeanette, who bats her eyes and calls after the retreating girls, with her hands locked together in mock-prayer. She says something - a waste of words, as far as Chloe’s concerned, cut off by the swing and the slam of the doors in Chloe’s wake.

“Was it something I said?”


	2. "please bring me my wine"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying something a bit different this time out: we’re going to spend some time with the Bloodlines characters, getting to know them from their own points of view. They’re not all Good People, I’m afraid, but they’re Bad in dramatic and exciting ways.
> 
> Also: this one kind of got away from me and I figured what the hell, let's crank up that rating.
> 
> Oh, and on the off-chance that you haven't played all of _Before The Storm_ yet: spoiler warning!

Inside the Asylum, a woman sits in the dark. Perhaps she’s on the edge of a bed, or perhaps she’s behind a desk; it doesn’t matter. There’s a trail of clothes between her and the door. She’ll pick them up later; or _she_ will.

Her thumbs blur and waver across a touchscreen, composing and sending a rapid rattled-off message.

There’s a soft chime from the sleek black smartphone on her right, and her face relaxes, settles into a calm, professional smile. Her head whips around, and - composed, clinical - her fingers tap-tap-tap out a response.

The obnoxiously pink phone on her left - the one almost covered in stickers, cartoon goth girls sassing and pouting and smirking - gives a cheerful _brrrrrringadingading_ at a pitch calculated to make her face twitch in dismay, and bounce back into a lascivious grin as she scoops it up and begins to reply.

It’s easier for them this way. They’ve accepted each other, but they don’t share well; when one of them’s wearing the other’s clothes, when one of them’s painted the other’s face (or not), when one of them’s pinned back their hair (or scooped it up)… they always feel like one of them’s trapped, one of them’s controlling, one of them’s breaking through.

This is easier. Just them, naked in the dark, with their hair down. Call, and response. Call, and response. Sliding into and out of the body, into and out of the world.

And whichever one of them wins out has a paper trail to prove it.

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** oh c’mon sis, it was fun]

[ **Therese:** It was a stupid risk. We don’t FLAUNT.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** you don’t, bb]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** i do]

[ **Therese:** When it’s USEFUL. Not to impress the cattle.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** that’s no way to talk about our customers]

[ **Therese:** Oh, please. We wouldn’t be HAVING this conversation if you weren’t getting… thirsty.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** omg you teased me]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** i'm so proud]

[ **Therese:** I learned from the best.]

[ **Therese:** So… what do you want to do with her?]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** idk tbh]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** part of me wants to just drink her right down right here right now]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** but part of me is all RESPONSIBLE and shit now]

[ **Therese:** I thought I was the responsible part of you?]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** learned from the best, sister mine]

[ **Therese:** Flattery will get you everywhere.]

[ **Therese:** So go on. Amuse me. What’s this ‘responsible you’ planning?]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** well you did say you wanted to call in that… full favor flavor]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** and we could use a face for the place when you’re off doing les affaires seriuse downtown]

[ **Therese:** Are you serious?]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** totes!]

[ **Therese:** I was considering Vandal.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** nuh uh no way hombre]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** we need him where he is]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** plus i want someone FUN]

[ **Therese:** And you think she’d be ‘FUN’?]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** you didn’t see her like i did, T-bird]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** i looked into her and she burned, baby, burned]

[ **Therese:** … I want to check her out before I agree to anything. And I have to clear it with Himself.]

[ **Therese:** I suppose you’re right about Vandal, though. We’d have to replace him anyway.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** yeah and you enjoy fucking with him]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** way too much to let him off the hook now]

[ **Therese:** Guilty as charged.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** which i can understand tbh]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** if he didn’t hate me i would TOTALLY go there]

[ **Therese:** Ugh. Please, no. Don’t even talk about the slightest possibility of… that.]

[ **Therese:** I don’t think I could look us in the face afterwards.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** well doing it is one of my very favourite things ever]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** but my sister is even more my favourite]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** so i will be good]

[ **Therese:** Good.]

[ **xxx_jEAnEttE:** for now XD]

Therese shakes her head, and puts her phone back on standby. She rises - stern, poised, controlled - and kicks Jeanette’s absurd regalia away from her feet. Winding her hair back into its tight ponytail, she picks up her glasses from the desk and slips them onto her face. Within minutes, she’s suited, booted, and ready to face the night.

* * *

 “It’s fine,” says Rachel, in the brisk, barely-contained ‘it’s not fine at all’ tone she uses when she’s thirty seconds from smashing the nearest thing with the nearest other thing. Chloe knows this game of old. Rachel’s going to blow up sooner or later - what Chloe has to do now is get her out of the way, contain the detonation, stop her starting shit she can’t finish.

“Rache, that place sucked balls anyway.”

“Ugh. That’s not the point. I hate being played like that.”

“What did she even say to you?”

Rachel ignores her, stalking over to a three-quarters-empty newspaper dispenser and kicking it. Not hard - she’s just getting warmed up - but the fuse is lit and the barrel’s there at the other end of it, and no gust of sea air nor faint drowsy fog blowing in off the Pacific are going to put it out -

\- but there are ways of working with Rachel. Corral her. Manage her. If push comes to shove, distract her - and Chloe still has half a bottle of Tecate in her jacket pocket.

“C’m’ere.” Chloe pulls out the bottle, keeping it behind her back, extending her other arm and waggling her fingers, drawing Rachel in, and tugging on her coat when she doesn’t. “She fucked with me too, remember? At least you didn’t fall on your ass just because she introduced herself.”

“Yeah. What the hell was that about?”

“This is going to sound nuts, but - her face _changed_. Like - she looked like me for a second, when she did the voice? And then poof, gone again.”

“Fucking really?” Rachel narrows her eyes, and bats Chloe’s hand away. Whoops. “Chloe, that’s… horseshit.”

“Pinkie swear. She looked like me.” Chloe lets her hand drop, delves it into her pocket, folds herself into her jacket - partly against the steadily more insistent fog, creeping and crawling through her sleeves and settling slick on the leather as it is, but partly because it makes her look weak, and right now, that’s what she’s counting on. She whips the bottle around, takes a pull, and mock-shudders. “If this shit wasn’t bottled I’d think the bar guy fucking spiked me. Remember when we took that acid on July Fourth?”

Rachel quirks a half-hearted effort at her brilliant smile - disarming, charming, and meant as a distraction while she lifts the bottle. “God, yes. You crawling all over me, ‘cause you thought you were flying and you’d got vertigo, and I was just staring at your sleeve, and…”

“… and you said ‘why don’t you just climb down the ivy’, and you kept saying it, you… total jackass.”

Rachel laughs, and downs all but a mouthful of Chloe’s beer, and this time she does hug Chloe, arms locking around her shoulders. “I said I was sorry, and you... didn't seem to complain.”

“You were pretty goddamn eloquent, fo’sho’.” Mission accomplished. Kind of. From years of experience, Chloe knows she’s strung a few more yards on the fuse, but this is going to rattle around Rachel’s head until she’s ready to spill. “Fuck it. Finish the beer. We’re not going home.” Chloe turns her head, smiles in genuine, temporary relief. “Live the dream, right?”

Rachel looks up at her - doubtful, impish, curious, feelings flickering across her face all at once as she rocks Chloe to and fro in her arms. Damn, she’s complicated. Finally, she settles on what looks like honest bafflement. “You’re up to something, Price.”

“C’mon. Walk and talk. And give me back my arms.”

* * *

[ **Goddess:** Vandal. You’re needed.]

[ **Goddess:** Come to me by two a/m, with supplies, as per.]

In his little booth in the blood bank, buried under three floors of ineptitude that call themselves the Santa Monica Medical Center, Vandal shudders. It’s a complex cocktail of emotions, this. Anticipation and alarm; lust and disgust; confusion and delusion. Will this be a night like all other nights, or the last night of the rest of his life? He’s no fool; he knows where this could go, some day, and he’s always done his part for his perfect white bitch queen, his nec-romantic icon, his madonna and - oh yes - his whore. He’s no fool. He knows what’s going on with her sister, and he’d love to take a bat to that one’s batshit little brain-pan one day.

He forces himself to type out an answer:

[Dear Goddess, thank you, thank you for just one drop of your purity…]

[Dear Goddess, drink of me instead, just once…]

[Dear Goddess, I want you, I need you, I love you, I hate you…]

He forces himself to delete them all, and licks his lips, already feeling her slip inside him, hot and potent, like golden whisky on a cold winter’s day, like cold iron into yielding meat, like mother’s milk through baby’s soft lips, like - like hell does any of this do it justice. Like Therese. Like nothing else on God’s filthy and befouled Earth.

He’s shivering, and his hands are barely steady, and he’s lightheaded, and on top of everything, he’s getting hard just thinking about her. No, nay, never, never like that; she would never in forever; she doesn’t even grace him with her sweet sweet fangs, though maybe tomorrow, maybe just maybe…

He’s walking through the break room door before he quite knows for sure he’s decided to, pushing it shut and locking it behind him, flicking out the lights, flopping on his back on the sofa. No risk. No risk. Nobody ever comes back here at night but him, and nobody’s going to fuck with him by day. He’s alone, in the dark, with his blood bags and his little booth, waiting for the surgeons to issue their frantic demands or the parasites to stop by and slather their insipid, insistent demands.

They can _wait_. Vandal has needs too.

“Come to me,” he murmurs, as he wrestles with the tie on his scrubs and the buckle of his belt underneath them, and doesn’t that little preposition just torment him so? _To_ is a preposition; _with_ is a preposition; _for_ and _on_ and _in_ are prepositions, and with that little semantic flourish he’s only a wish and a dream away from her, and God how he wants what he knows he can’t have.

But he’s thinking about it, as his blood drains through him. Thinking about it draining into _her_. Thinking about her lips closing around his cock, taking his ache into herself, twitching, thirsty, yearning, as he grabs her prim ponytail and _thrusts._  Thinking about her, feeling the way he feels, as he enters her the way she enters him, and more, and more…

Thinking about the body he _knows_ is wreathed in her cold steely greys, that she torments with and taunts with and teases with, never so crass as her sister and ever so much more cruel. That cut, that line, clinging to her - that vee of pale delight beneath her throat - his hands, fumbling at her buttons like they fumble at his own, and he knows she’s wearing next to nothing underneath, and his free hand gropes the cool conditioned air and imagines the taut tense chill of her perfect skin as she sinks down on him…

A more willing slave she’ll never have, nor ever wish for, and as she opens herself to him he draws her down and sinks his own crude blunt _fucking worthless_ teeth into the sleek glory of her throat, and she shudders the way he shudders as they close their endless fucking circuit at last, at last…

… alas.

Vandal comes to himself, and by himself, and on himself. Too bad. So sad. He wallows for a moment, shivering in man’s mortal frailty, and without thinking, wipes his hand on the sofa. It’s had worse. He’s pretty sure the day crew are at it like knives of an evening before he comes in. Bastards. Stupid, petty, _lucky_ bastards, more mortal than Vandal and so much happier.

Then force of habit takes over, and he shuffles over to the sink, wipes himself down with a handful of rough paper towels, scrubs his hands and crotch in lukewarm water, wastes more paper towels on patting down and drying, and buttons himself up.

Poor damned fool that he is.

This is what he’s been telling himself for… how long has it been? This nightly grind, this rut ploughed between home and hospital and, on a handful of precious nights, the Asylum, or the rest of the rack?

This is the old lie, at any rate; that maybe one day she’ll give into temptation, just this once, and she’ll stoop to conquer.

Maybe this time he’ll have done enough.

At least he got it out of his system before going to her. She’d be appalled if he gave the slightest hint of his desires. She likes things… clinical. Professional. Servile. Turn up, with his wares in a cooler and his syringes to hand; fill her crystal glass, and take what precious little he’s permitted; clear off.

Cleansed, prepared, ready for the ritual chamber, he picks up his phone and sends the kind of text she likes.

[ **Slave:** Your wish is my command.]

* * *

“OK, OK.” Rachel laughs, makes a half-hearted swipe at the bottle, and nearly falls over. “This was totally a better idea of mine that you happened to have.”

Chloe rolls her eyes - a little theatrically, and a little genuinely, and maybe a little drunkenly. They’d stopped at an alleyway bodega, cracked their second ten-dollar bill for one tall bottle of Pacifico, and _somehow_ they got turned around heading for the pier, and now they’re weaving their way down the beach in their half-assed gothy rags, bathed in the neon lights and the second-hand sound and the soft roar of the misty Pacific. They’re not alone - there are couples dotted here and there across the dunes, small knots of midnight surfers further out on the edge of the light, but if they turn their eyes out to sea, it’s just possible for them to fool themselves.

It’s… more or less how they planned it, at least, and as Chloe lowers herself gracelessly onto the sand, she’s actually grateful at last. One of these days they’ll get shit right first time.

“I mean it.” Rachel cosies up to Chloe, smiles that brilliant the-world-ends-with-me smile, and rests her head on Chloe’s shoulder. “I’ve wanted this for so long, but you actually made it happen. And every time I go wrong, you’ve made things right again.”

“Aw, crap. I was hoping you weren’t noticing.” Chloe lets her head loll down, her cheek on Rachel’s soft mist-sparkling hair, one arm draped around Rachel and the other rescuing the bottle.

“Of course I notice. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Even though I kept you in Arcadia Bay for two whole years?”

“You made Arcadia Bay _bearable_ for two whole years, babe. And you kept your promise. You left with me.”

“Not like there was jack shit to keep me there.” A deep pull on the bottle, and she passes it over, propping her weight on that arm. “Mom’s prolly happier being Mrs. David Madsen without me hanging around calling her on it, and… everyone else is dead, or in Seattle.”

“C’mon, Chloe, don’t even _try_ that fake nihilistic thing. You fool almost everyone, but not me.” Rachel downs a mouthful of beer, and plants the bottle emphatically in the sand. “You’re not running away _from_ anything, you’re running away _with_ me. Because you love my ass. And because deep down inside you’re the most positive person on Earth. You even talked my junkie mom into giving herself a second chance.”

“Eh. Sera never really wanted to give up on you, y’know? All I had to do was shut her down.” Chloe shrugs, as well as she can with one shoulder taking her weight and one shoulder bearing most of Rachel’s. “Hey, is she still in Long Beach? We should totally look her up.”

“Maybe? You know how much she sucks with return addresses. Last I heard she was staying at some place up in the Hollywood Hills, but that was Christmas. She could be halfway to Las Vegas by now and I wouldn’t know ‘til Thanksgiving. She called on my birthday, but I was out of it; totally forgot to ask her where she was.”

“Don’t remind me. I got so swept up with the truck, and squaring shit with Frank…”

“Shut up, will you? Just - shit, just look up there. You see that Ferris wheel? You see us? You, and me, and Santa Monica beach at midnight, and this crappy Mexican beer? You did this. You got us here.” Rachel pulls away from Chloe, thin-lipped and sincere-drunk now, but before she’s straightened up to look her in the eye Chloe’s toppled over into the sand.

Before Chloe can recover, Rachel pounces, pinning her down by the shoulders and smiling that smile again. Her hands have snuck inside Chloe’s jacket, and she squeezes Chloe’s collarbone, her nails digging in around Chloe’s thin strappy top. Short-circuited - she does this every time - Chloe can only reach up with the one hand that’s sort of free, toying with Rachel’s feather earring, rubbing her knuckles against Rachel’s cheek.

“Seriously,” says Rachel, more softly than before. “This is all I ever wanted from you. You’ve given me everything. A whole future.” She leans in to Chloe’s fingers, her eyelids slowly batting closed and open again, and she’s never looked more like the lioness she is. “I fucking love you, Chloe Price.”

It’s been two-and-a-bit years since the fire, since that wild and crazy week when Chloe decided she could die happy if she only heard those words, and they still punch right through her heart and shoot liquid fire right through her every vein. She blushes, makes a fist in Rachel’s hair, and - gently, insistently, irreversibly - pulls her ‘94 crazed firebird lady down to kiss her, right there on the beach.

And why not? After all, Rachel Amber loves Chloe Price, and Chloe Price loves Rachel Amber, and they’ve finally made it to Santa Monica. Love conquers all, motherfuckers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe a shoutout to Moonfreckle, who wrote [a lovely long fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693572/chapters/23683428) about Vandal, really went to town on the nasty little sod, and made me see a lot of potential in him as a character, rather than the mere functionary he is in the game.


	3. what a nice surprise

The problem with dreams, Chloe reflects, is that they’re usually over by morning. This one doesn’t seem any different. They’ve dragged each other out of bed successfully enough, shaken the sand from their shoes, and headed to the parking lot down the block where the truck and the rest of their belongings are stowed, but that’s where it’s all stopped going right.

Chloe tugs the key from the ignition, jams it in again, and shakes her head ruefully as the engine steadfastly fails to turn over.

“What do you mean, ‘it won’t start’?”

“Hold on.” Chloe puts a finger to Rachel’s lips even as the pout is forming; kicks the truck door open; slides to the ground and thumps the bonnet; oh, crap. “Uh, I mean… I mean… I mean the distributor’s distributed itself all over the fucking place, and there’s something oozing out of… oh, shit…”

“But… you can fix it, right?”

“Well, yeah, _eventually_ , but it’ll take more than Scotch tape and popsicle sticks this time. Most of this stuff’s on the legs after its last legs, babe. Even if I could put it all back together… we’d arrive in bits. And the bits would be on fire.”

“Fucking great.” Rachel slumps back in her seat, slapping her hands against the faded, torn vinyl. “So now what the hell do we do?”

“OK, OK. Step one. Drag the rest of our stuff back to the shitbox by hand. Step two. Find somewhere that does breakfast for two at… how much’ve we got left?”

“Four bucks seventy-eight. And three pesos I found in the mattress.”

“Shit. Then… step three: uh, mug someone, I guess. Or start pawning clothes.”

* * *

Step one takes them through to early afternoon. They didn’t exactly bring any heavy shit, but they didn’t exactly get up with the lark either, and last night’s mist is this morning’s stifling humidity. Chloe finds herself praying for a storm; it’ll clear the air, and it’ll save her from having to use their apartment’s evil-looking mould-prison of a shower.

They wake up everyone on the first floor hauling Chloe’s plants up the stairs - anything to put some honest wholesome healthy life in the apartment - and throw themselves on their neighbours’ mercy. At least this takes care of step two, since Mrs Kleinzack in 506 refuses to see two nice girls go without a good brunch on their first full day in town.

Over a _pile_ of goetta and sauerkraut, Chloe decides on a side order of boot leather, ordered super-smoothly when she puts her foot in her mouth and says words to the effect of “Thank Christ there’s someone normal in this place.”

Mrs. Kleinzack’s all “has someone been giving you trouble, then?” and Rachel doubles down and tells her exactly what she thinks of Vandal-in-507, and before either of them know what’s going on, she’s bustled off upstairs. Chloe cringes, Rachel shrugs, and they both sit through a solid minute of hammering on doors and yelling.

Then quiet. Footsteps. The door opens again. Vandal shuffles in, surly and half-asleep, propelled at the point of an old lady, his pursed lips twitching slightly and robe slightly askew. The fact that there’s a flower embroidered on the pocket just seems to complete the picture, somehow.

“I’m… _told_ … I may have freaked you out, just a _tiny little bit,_ last night. It’s been _suggested_ to me that I _apologise_. For being high as balls and, uh, not remembering you were _people_.”

Rachel looks him up and down - thank God she has her mouth full. Chloe blinks once, twice, savours the moment, and decides there’s some more mileage here.

“Does Mrs. K have, like, blackmail material on you or something?”

“No. A _bit_. Mostly I… really like her currywurst. OK?”

Rachel practically chokes, and that defuses the moment a hell of a lot more than anything Chloe can think of. Their hostess is far from satisfied, though; judging by Vandal’s sudden head-jerk and snarl, she’s jabbed him somewhere soft.

“Oh. _Yes_. By the _way_. I’m _also_ told you’re hurting for money. And that in my _official_ capacity, the State of California has empowered me to offer _viele_ dollars for each _gracious_ donation of your precious, precious blood. Medical Center, over the road. Cash on _delivery_.” Without waiting for an answer, he looks down at his diminutive escort and growls: “May I _go_ now?”

The door slams behind him, and gradually, Chloe recovers her composure.

“Did that just happen?”

“You know what the _worst_ thing is?” says Rachel, over the top of her coffee cup. “After the world’s longest shower, and give or take six days’ solid sleep, he’d actually be kinda cute.”

“You disgust me.”

“What? Antisocial and dangerous is kind of my type, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Rachel blows Chloe a kiss over the table, and laughs. After a slightly-too-long moment, Chloe laughs too.

* * *

Paige St. Martin seems like a nice lady. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a high school education, to figure out why she works the day shift and Vandal the night. A little nervous, a little awkward, but a consummate professional and a dab hand with a needle. She has one of those faces - soft, slightly too trusting - and she toys with her cheap wedding band like she’s not used to it being there.

She chatters away about this and that while the forms are filled out and the blood bags are fetched up, and by arm-stabbing time she’s asking them about Oregon and Arcadia Bay and Blackwell like she’s seriously considering going there on vacation.

“It’s a _dive_ ,” Chloe says for the third time. “I don’t get why you’re so curious about it.”

“Well, Santa Monica’s not exactly _glamorous_ \- not when you have to live here all year round, you know?” Paige smiles wanly, carefully arranging a bag so gravity can do its work. “I’m just saying you see the place at its worst in this job. It kinda… wears people down, unless you find something to latch on to. Malcolm’s my absolute _rock_ , he has been since I was just a student here, but Santa Monica gets to him.”

“How come?” Rachel was a bit weird about the needle - Paige had gone for her scarred left arm first, and she's still kinda insecure about the faint marks cosmetic surgery can't hide - but she’s watching the bag fill now with apparent fascination.

“Well, it’s not so bad _now_ , but back in '04 there was one hell of a crime wave. Cars went missing and turned up six months later soldered together, there were fights in half the alleys in town. Even in the Surfside; check out the back wall by the payphone and you can still see the bullet holes. The worst thing was that ship where the whole crew got slaughtered on the way in to port, and the whole Southland Slasher thing... and those buildings that blew up. There was a warehouse, round here, and a couple tower blocks downtown. Terrorists, they said, but I don't know...”

“Pretty major league,” says Chloe, making a half-assed mental note to look some of this shit up. That’s the second time someone’s mentioned the Southland Slasher, for one thing…

“Mm-hmm. Minor, too. Even this place got worked over, if you believe that. And we’d have people in here with bullets in their heads, hit and run victims, more than a few homeless just bleeding out on the doorstep… Malcolm was the night surgeon then, and it was basically all on him, you know?”

“He’s not now?” says Chloe, right as Rachel says “He’s your husband?”

“Right on both counts,” Paige twinkles at them. “He got promoted not long after his divorce - I guess they felt sorry for him, maybe they wanted to cut him a break, maybe they felt responsible? I don’t know why, his wife was just so _controlling_. I don’t think she appreciated how much he cares, you know? It was just a job to her, a stupid job that meant he was never home in time for breakfast. Of course, I basically _jumped_ on him…”

“Atta girl.” Rachel’s all smiles, and Chloe wonders what her game is - she’s got to be playing Paige for something, she’s never not playing games. “Can’t leave time for control freaks in your life, am I right?”

“So let me guess… I’m going to say you two left in a hurry. Running away from your resident ‘control freaks’?” Paige smiles, scribbling a note on her pad.

“Right first time.” Chloe leans back in her chair; if she’s going to be here for a while, she’s going to stay comfy. “My stepdad’s a professional douchecanoe, and Rachel’s is a pathological liar.”

“And… I’m guessing _you’re_ the aspiring actress?”

“Do I get the impression you’ve heard this story before?” Rachel sounds a little chillier now, but Paige is either oblivious or convinced she can sweep her way by.

“Oh, once or twice. I don’t mean to be rude, I’ve just… you know, I’ve been here long enough that not a lot surprises me. You’re done, by the way.” She draws the needles out gently, swabs, presses down gauze and tape, all very spick and span.

Ten minutes later Chloe and Rachel are a hundred bucks richer - turns out there’s an extra incentive for first time donors - and making their way back across the street.

“So. _Food_. And cleaning shit.”

“When did you turn so domestic?”

“Chloe, babe, I know _you_ love me come what may but I doubt Hollywood smiles on split ends and road stink, and that shower is…”

“I’ve seen it. I get you.” Chloe sniffs her own shirt, and wishes she hadn’t.

“Although… I don’t want to spend it all. We have to do something about the truck.”

Chloe squints at the horizon - the sun’s arcing gracefully down behind the low buildings, and there’s something away in the distance that looks promising. Maybe Paige's talk of crime waves has got her going, thinking along old lines.

Semi-legal lines.

OK, illegal lines.

“I wouldn’t worry. A plan is forming.”

“O-ho. Fun plan?”

“Sorry, girlfriend. This is an in-and-out operation. Secret plan. Subtle plan. Not a smashy-smashy plan.”

“Your lack of faith in me is…”

“Totally justified?” Chloe smirks, and Rachel rolls her eyes, and Chloe gives her a little win in trade for the big one. "I promise I'll be back before midnight."

* * *

The sign overhead says ‘Brothers Salvage’, in flickering red-on-white letters that stand out against a darkening sky. The truck hull impaled on the post closes down all possibility of doubt. This is the place. There’s a little bleached-wood cabin just inside the gate, and stack upon stack of rusting cars beyond. There’s a light on in the cabin, but it’s not facing the street, and nobody’s driving by; this doesn’t look like a place people come often, not even for short cuts.

Chloe stretches, as high as she possibly can, and laces her fingers into the wire gate. A spring, a scramble, and a hairy moment up top, and she’s over, with a rip in her jeans that wasn’t there yesterday. With the softest ‘shit’ she can utter, she’s moving - staying flush with the cabin wall and low to the ground, out of sight from inside and outside the light of the windows.

Someone still opens the door, though, just as Chloe rounds the corner of the cabin and ducks behind it, peeking around to see what’s going down. The guy stepping out of the trailer is huge; three hundred pounds of tattooed meat, stepping heavily down the cabin steps. Chloe bobs back, creeping along the wall as he snaps on a high-powered flashlight, its beam swaying to and fro unevenly, piercing the twilight air.

As it turns toward the gate, Chloe risks making a break for the nearest stack of cars -

“That’s far enough.”

The light snaps around. Chloe throws up her hands in surrender, and throws them down again in frustration, slapping them into her thighs.

“Ah, shit.” She turns around, palms out, one shading her eyes, putting on her best winsome expression. “You got me, OK? Fair and square. I didn’t take jack shit, so how about you just…”

“Get your ass inside.” He keeps the light on her, aimed at her face, but the hand Chloe’s expecting to feel on her shoulder doesn’t come. Chloe complies, all OK-OK, and makes her way up the shaky steps.

‘Inside’ turns out to mean an office that takes up half the cabin, with a ratty-ass sofa under the window and a desk facing it. The guy behind the desk, half out of his chair as they walk in, looks like a Samoan take on every totally-used-to-roadie-for-Motörhead burnout Chloe’s ever met. Worn, cocoa-powder complexion; heavyset, ponytail, faded tattoos visible on the backs of his hands and his neck. He’s been poured into a shabby suit - or the jacket and pants at least, but he’s still wearing a T-shirt underneath, something drab with black-on-black print. He’s got one of those faces - jowly, weary, with dark all-out-of-fucks-to-give bags under his eyes - that says fucking with him means big trouble but brazening it out might just be OK.

“So whadda we have here?” he says, once he’s levered himself upright.

“Pretty big opossum, Tommy.”

Chloe turns around to drop bombs on the fat fuck, but she barely has the bay doors open when she finally gets a good look at him, without a flashlight shining right in her face, and -

“You’re shitting me.” Chloe’s half addressing him, half addressing the universe. She’s agnostic at best, but this kind of deja vu always makes her wonder.

“No fucking way,” he says, softer now, and without the bellow in his voice Chloe _definitely_ recognises him. “What the hell are you doing here, Red Sonja? Your fuckin’ Panzer tank break down?”

“Thunder, what is this?” The other one - Tommy? - makes his way halfway around the desk. “You know this little bitch?”

“We’ve met.” Thunder chuckles, rubbing his nose. His tattoos have spread in the last two years, but so’s the rest of him; he was big, now he’s borderline humongous. “Her ID said ‘Abigail Reece’, but since it also said she was twenty-two two years ago, I dunno if I’d believe it.”

“There’s a joke I’m not getting here, right?” Tommy scratches under his ponytail. He’d been pissed, now he’s just confused - but ‘confused’ might be pretty close to ‘pissed again’ with a guy like him.

“You know the last place I worked? She was at the last show there. Last guest in. Sassed me within an inch of my life to get by me.”

“Well that’s cute, Thunder, and God am I glad you’ve got yourself a girlfriend, but she still broke into my fucking yard.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, man.” Chloe shuffles; this isn’t the time to go hardball, not yet. “I can explain.”

“I’m sure.” Tommy doesn’t sound convinced, but Thunder chuckles softly.

“Not gonna lie: I needed parts. I’d like to buy ‘em fair and square, but my truck’s basically that handcart shit goes to hell in, and my hella-pissed girlfriend took all the money I’ve got left for bus fare to fucking Hollywood.” It’s the good kind of lie - perfectly possible, almost true. It’s the sort of thing Rachel _might_ do. To someone else. Maybe.

“Damn, girl, you got _boring_.” Thunder rumbles, but Tommy interrupts him.

“Your truck?”

“Uh huh. Piece of shit Ford F-150. ‘85 build. She ain’t pretty, but she’s mine.”

“That thing must be ten years older’n you.” Tommy’s hackles are dropping; he has that impressed-despite-himself look Chloe’s seen on so, so many faces. “You were gonna fix that up yourself?”

“Sure. It worked the first two times.” Chloe nibbles her lower lip, and goes for broke. “Look, I just need… bits and pieces. Nothing huge. I don’t want to start shit. I screwed up, you caught me, lesson learned, I can walk away if you’ll just _give me a break_.”

Tommy narrows his eyes; Thunder shifts his weight, which is enough to rock the cabin a little; and at that moment, the old flip-phone on Tommy’s desk rings.

He scoops it up, squints at the Caller ID, and picks up. There’s some back and forth, some “uh huh” and “I getcha” and finally “Sure. Won’t be right away. We’ve got a little trouble here, nothing - nothing major, nothing we can’t handle. Nah. Just some punk kid nosing around. No, for Chrissakes don’t tell B. I _know_ what he says, but Thunder knows this girl. She’s cool. Apparently.” Tommy rolls his eyes. “OK, fine. _If_ you don’t tell B about the girl. We cool?”

The phone snaps shut, and Tommy gives Chloe the skull eye. When Thunder speaks, he actually sounds worried, for the first time tonight:

“B’s not coming here, is he?”

“I fucking hope not, but I ain’t dealing with him alone and I ain’t having her here while he is and I sure as hell ain’t having cops involved. So _you_ ,” he adds, glaring at Chloe, “are getting off light. I see you round here again, you don’t walk back out.”

Thunder walks Chloe out, back to the gate, so there goes plan A (push her luck, raid the junkpiles, sneak back out while Tommy’s in his mysterious meeting). Probably for the best. Chloe sighs, lets her shoulders fall, and crosses her fingers in her jacket pocket.

“So, what the hell are you doing down here?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“I asked first.”

“Tommy’s my brother. He set me up with the job here after the mill burned down. What with… one thing and another… I didn’t feel like staying in Arcadia Bay.”

“This is gonna be about Damon, right?”

“What about Damon? Shit, how do you even know Damon?”

Fingers crossed a little tighter: “I know you were informing on him.”

“How the actual fuck? What are you, punk rock Nancy Drew?”

“I… had to get him off someone’s back. And mine. While I was looking for leverage, I found… a bunch of stuff. Including your file.”

He doesn’t take it all that well. A meaty fist that looks about the size of Chloe’s face lashes out at the gate, rattling it all the way back to the hinges.

“Gimme one good reason not to - ”

“I covered for you.”

“You got Sheldon fucking killed!”

“Instead of you, dude!” Chloe steps up to him, palms up, the ‘whaddayagonnado’ broadcast from the set of her shoulders on down. “Guy was a prick anyway, he fucking assaulted me over a beer.”

Thunder tugs on the wire, snorts, and straightens up, pulling himself together with a sigh. “Yeah. He _was_ a prick. And after what Damon did to him, I guess I owe you one. Like you say; coulda been me.”

Though she’d uncrossed them by reflex, Chloe locks her fingers back together again, behind her back. Here goes nothing. “Well… I’m up on the day. I came down here from Oregon with a junked truck, a high-maintenance girl and no GED. I could use a favour, tee-bee-aitch.”

“Jesus H Christ, you’ve got a world of nerve. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, what I need most in the world, right now, is either those truck parts, or a fucking job.”

“A _world_ of nerve.” Thunder shakes his head again. “But Tommy doesn’t hate you yet…”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Eh, he just prefers engines to people. You’ve impressed him. Just stay the fuck out of his way for a few days, and I’ll… be in touch.”

Chloe fishes out her marker, scribbles her name and number on the back of a receipt, and slaps it into Thunder’s hand; he sighs, slides the gate open, and shoos her out with a mock bow.

“Hey. Thanks.”

“Just get the fuck out of here, tank girl.”

* * *

“So you break into a guy’s place of business and end up making a friend. I have taught you _well_ , apprentice.”

Rachel’s sitting opposite Chloe on the mattress she’s flipped, straightened and made more or less presentable, hugging her bare knees and grinning widely. The shitbox is looking… a bit more box and a bit less shit. The windows are clean, the bathroom looks Second if not First world, and the bed’s a little fresher, and Chloe’s plants are arranged to either side of the TV, hogging the streetlights and making shadows dance on the floor. It’s all feeling worryingly… adult.

“A friend, and maybe even a regular gig. Under the table, but my dropout ass can’t complain, y’know?”

“Neat.” Rachel’s grin softens into a warm, easy smile. “I can almost forgive you for burning our girl out in the first place.”

“Hey, she _got_ us here.”

“Yeah, trailing widgets and fuckamabobs all the way to the state line.”

Chloe puts her face in her beanie-wrapped hands and sighs. “You’re never letting that go, are you?”

Rachel laughs, leaning back against the bedframe and “Why would I? I love that you can fix all this shit and have no idea what it’s called. It’s cute.”

“I prefer ‘raging hot badass’ to ‘cute’, OK?”

“Well, duh. That’s why you’re with me.”

Chloe laughs, rolling back on the bed and casting her eyes to the ceiling. Between breaths she feels the springs grind and the mattress shift, and she shakes her head, welcoming Rachel into her arms, welcoming the lingering kiss when it comes, hot and sweet and breathless in the heavy air.

“God, you stink. Why do you still stink?”

“I was going to clean up, but I figured you’d get home or get into trouble, and either way, I’d just end up getting _dirty_ again.” Rachel runs her fingers through Chloe’s hair, spreading them and holding it up to the light. “Bought you some more dye, by the way.”

“We have, like, a hundred bucks in the world and you bought me hair dye?”

“It’s important to you. And it makes you look like the raging hot badass you are, so it’s important to me, too.”

“Smooth. Smooth with a capital SMOO.”

This time it’s Chloe who leads the kiss, her hands running up the back of Rachel’s neck and drawing them together, her nails scritching just under her ears. They joke, but in some ways Rachel really is like a cat; gorgeous, and vain, and mercurial, and easily pleased by this kind of little gesture. Also, she purrs - or at least she does this little soft growl thing when she’s horny, and what the hell else is Chloe going to call it?

This isn’t the time for that sort of question, though, because Rachel’s hands are already sliding under Chloe’s ancient T-shirt (one of her dad’s, she registers out of habit, as it’s scooped up past her chin and rolled up her arms and discarded), and Chloe’s sliding Rachel’s soft loose shirt off her shoulders.

They let go of each other just long enough to work clothes past hands or feet and toss them away, coil closer again in a tangle of lips and fingers. Fingers running over Chloe’s ribs, teasing the edge of her best (only) heavy-lifting sports bra, and fingers unfastening Rachel’s could-they-be-more-cutoff shorts. Fingers gliding with a practised experience over territories made home by time and love and two years of this, the two of them locking together and shutting out the world.

Rachel kisses her way down Chloe’s chest, and Chloe’s nails rake Rachel’s back, exactly hard enough to leave a mark that’ll fade by morning. Exactly is the word - bodies are strange and moods vary but they’ve done this often enough that they know now, and it only takes a shift in Rachel’s breathing for Chloe to know she’s ready and to slip inside her _just so_ -

\- and it’s not that they don’t communicate, but they can do it in fragments now, and the way Rachel says “little” means Chloe knows “faster” is coming next, and one hand’s scratching the mattress and one’s tangled in Chloe’s hair and they both _clutch_ in a way she knows so well right as Rachel yelps and shivers and glistens beneath her.

It’s not the fresh, heart-thumping heat they felt at the start - it’s a warm, sleek, familiar passion, picking the bones of first love with honed precision, sliding in and out of them and through them. It’s virtuoso, and it’s elegant, and it’s spent sweetly in the dying light, and before long, so are they.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More props than usual to WellHarkAtHer, whose insight hammered this chapter and the next two into a shape that wasn't 'unmanageable 10K word mess'.
> 
> This one's for the LIS fans who believe as I do that sometimes our girls just need to be _happy_ together for a bit. And a little bit of self-indulgence as two of my favourite minor characters show up and I write a couple of OCs.
> 
> If you're wondering where all the vampires and violence and general gothic gruesomeness have got to: chapter four will have you covered. *fingerguns*


	4. in the master's chamber

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AWOOGA! A Warning!
> 
> Those of you who are either purely here for the Life Is Strange characters or of a sensitive disposition may wish to skip Chapters 4 and 5, which are all about spending some time with our antagonists and the horrible things they get up to.
> 
> If you do not wish to skip Chapters 4 and 5, check out the tags and be warned: this is where it starts getting fucked up. That’s why I’m posting two chapters at once. My advice? Give yourself a break after 4, look after yourself, bleach your brain if you have to, then go into 5, and just… hold tight and think of Amberprice. We’ll be back with the girls in 6, I promise.

Vandal’s second awakening is, technically, ruder than the first. At least, it’s more R-rated, and isn’t that the same thing? His hearing’s razor-sharp when the Blood’s inside him - makes crossing the street a living hell, and the buzz of the flourescent light in the booth at the blood bank drives him slowly madder and madder every night.

It also means he can hear the blue phoenix and her firebrand going at it across the hallway, in a room that started as the mirror of his own. One of them’s trying her utmost to come quietly, and it amuses him for half a moment to try and guess which.

Funny old world, isn’t it? The mistress of his heart’s desires says “find me a girl” and once Vandal’s got his reality straightened he checks in and twigs it’s the girl next door.

In another time - oh, he was so much younger then - Vandal would have got up and grabbed her straight away. _That_ kind of attitude had earned him a restraining order, a thirty-eight-grand bail-and-representation bill to clear, and a severe slap on the wrist from Goddess. She’d all but cut him off - the worst six weeks of his life, shivering and quivering like some junkie in heat as he waited and pleaded for her to forgive him.

The ghoul’s grown smart since then. Softly, softly. He’s learned to be patient.

He takes a little off the top of the centrifuge, offers a kickback for another bag, forges a few records here and there, and that’s blood enough to keep the locals ticking over. Only once in a while - during busy season - will he strap some poor dear into the chair and bleed ‘em till they bleed no more.

Not that this one’s for the chair, hoo no. The Bitch Princess has a personal interest in this one, so the Queen Bitch wants to meet her. Harder, harder. He’d been lucky, in retrospect, that his good downstairs neighbour had dragooned him into providing for them; because _if_ they’ve taken his advice, _then_ he has a few things. Names. Dates. Samples. Maybe he’ll keep the other one; wouldn’t hurt to tidy up loose ends, make sure there’s nobody competing for the Bitch Princess’ attentions.

He can afford to play it safe. It can be business as usual. So instead of rushing over there with his taser like he would have done back in ‘02 when he was new to all this, he hauls himself out of the double bed beneath the windows, and drags his ass to the shower, and gets ready for work. The _lovebirds_ woke him up early, so he’ll treat himself to breakfast on the way. Just to settle his nerves.

* * *

Across the great city of Los Angeles, among the winding streets and sprawling grounds of the mansions in the hills past Sunset Boulevard, someone very different from Vandal (and yet, in one or two very fundamental ways, the same) is preparing for a long night.

All of Nadia Milliner’s nights are long.

Time has changed the shy, stuttering graduate student who stopped in with her distant relations in the summer of ‘04 and never left. She made one mistake at her Uncle Bruno’s Halloween ball, and that was the end of her.

The person she is _now_ is surprised, sometimes, that they didn’t kill the person she was _then_. That person was naive; that person screwed up; that person begged. That person had potential; but that person’s family have killed clueless cousins for a lot less.

Nadia must _really_ have had something, and so she works day and night in living up to that.

The store of lore in her head has long ago replaced and outclassed what was stolen on her watch, while she lay dazed on the mortuary slab from her first truly pleasurable Kiss. (God, how she remembers that; there is no such delight on the lips or in the teeth of the Giovanni, as she has learned on unwelcome occasions since then. Kissing cousins may be the family fashion, but it hurts like hell; the crime is its own punishment, the sin its own penance.)

Any time there’s grunt work to be done - anything that doesn’t require the more direct talents of her handier cousins, anything that’s beneath the dignity of the inner circle, she takes it on. She fetches and carries, operates and investigates, disposes and dispenses.

She is, as Uncle Bruno tells her, indispensable.

Not yet indispensable _enough_ , but she’s a step or two closer. When he brought Mira over the threshold he elevated Nadia to take her place; it’s one of life’s little ironies that he ordered Mira to bestow the Proxy Kiss.

In the long run, that’s a good sign. The Giovanni don’t shit where they eat; they frown on making babies out of your slaves; or, to put it in the proper terminology, writing it up neatly with a footnote to hand, they don’t allow regnants to Embrace their thralls. It’ll be Bruno or Santino or Luciana who brings her over, in the end, not Mira, and for that she’s so very very grateful.

In the meantime, she’s stuck with Mira. For which she is anything _but_ grateful.

Running blood from Santa Monica’s discreet little dispensary is only one of her chores, but it’s one of her favourites. It gets her out of the house, and it gets her away from Mira for a few hours - but not so long that she starts to feel anxious, that she starts to get thirsty.

And, though she detests herself for even thinking it, she likes the change of company too. All these bitches sucking blood up here on Sunset Boulevard get to her after a while; sometimes it’s nice to go somewhere where she can tune in, turn on, and burn off for a while.

Which is exactly what she’s preparing to do tonight. Artfully mussing her black bob; carefully shading her pale blue lips; putting together the look for good old S-M. A little trashy, a little bulletproof, a little more than you can afford; the sleek halter top says one thing, the tough leather jacket says another, and the switchblade up her sleeve says 'surprise, motherfucker'.

She could take a cab, but it’s a nice night, and she’s in no hurry, and frankly, six days from her last hit, she’s not as worried about pissing Mira off as she could be. That’ll change before she comes home, but that’s part of why she’s making this run tonight. The Bond means she loves Mira whether she wants to or not - but with care, and good timing, it doesn’t have to be exclusive.

With that in mind, she packs her last pipette into the cooler bag, drops in a couple of icepacks to be on the safe side, and heads out for the Red Line station.

* * *

The text message comes through while Vandal’s finishing his grits’n’bacon:

[ **Nadiamantic** : On my way to collect, and it’s that time of the month.]

[ **Nadiamantic** : I could go for the extras.]

Vandal smiles, wanly. It’s not that he has favourite customers. They’re all parasites, his fellow ghouls most of all. But, if he was backed into a corner and had to pick the one he dislikes least, it’s the Giovanni’s overqualified errand girl.

What was it she’d said to him, the first time, when the Blood was running high in him, pushing his rhythms into overdrive?

_“If I were the only ghoul in the world, and you the only boy, I’d still be out of your league.”_

But she’d been curious, hadn’t she? She’d asked:

_“Where does it all come from? How do you get away with this?”_

And then she’d asked him to test her blood, and a sample she’d bought him, and he’d asked why, and she’d told him her deep dark secret. He’d smiled at her, and he’d asked her: _“what’s it worth?”_

And she’d snarled at him and asked him _“where’s the morgue?”_

It’s not love. There’s no room in either of their hearts for that. Vandal is locked into Therese, and Nadia is shackled to some prissy bitch who holds her chains - _“for now,”_ she’d said, her face carven and fierce in the stark fluorescent light. But that’s just it - some prissy bitch.

They have a lot in common. They’re both doing the danse macabre with some fussy eater who devours their world. They’re both aching with the Blood, and what it does to the body. They’re both, frankly, sick fucks.

It’s not love, but it’s a kind of friendship. One with extremely niche benefits.

She’s going to keep him busy. She always does. It’s a mighty order, for one thing, feeding whoever owns her for a month. It invariably uses up a donor - she likes it that way, too - and high summer’s busy season. Short nights mean precious little time for hunting; the phony people have no time to prey. He’ll need to find someone else for the chair after she’s gone. Some tourist, some gangbanger, some veteran rattling his tin cup for a handful of love; someone nobody will miss.

Maybe tomorrow. He’ll be a little busy tonight.

* * *

It’s two hours’ ride and fifteen minutes brisk get-your-blood-up walk later. Nadia’s handed out some pocket change, smiled sweetly at a few of the locals, and not had to pull her knife on anyone. A good night, thus far.

She weaves through the alleys of downtown Santa Monica, avoiding the tourist crowds, passing that computer place that never seems to open but always has the lights on (Kindred front, she’s sure of it) and taking a hard left at the Asylum (the Voermans don’t give her the creeps, because a Giovanni pawn _shits_ creepier things than upwardly-mobile poseurs, but the sisters are dangerous).

The mercy hospital - the medical centre - call it what you will - looms three stories overhead, bathed in flickering neon from the signs on every side. Nadia lets herself in by the side door - the one that Vandal leaves unlocked every night, and the security guy never bothers to check.

She sweeps straight down the stairs without looking - lingering behind the glass door into the centre proper will get her caught out, she knows - and passes by the vending machines and then glides, elegantly, economically, to a halt in front of the little booth in which the little monster spends his nights. It’s like she’s done this before.

Vandal looks up from his tiny TV, licks his palm and slicks down his hair with a forced, hollow, faux-jaunty “Hell-o, nurse!” He cackles softly, spins his chair and stands up, doubling down in his normal voice as he reaches the counter. “What’s a _nasty_ girl like you doing in a _wholesome_ establishment like this?”

Nadia snorts. It’s either contempt or fondness, and she doesn’t entirely know which. At least she doesn’t have to fake around him - doesn’t have to look over her own shoulder and hide the nerves by pretending to be nervous and hiding it. “Lovely to see you too, Cleaver. What have you got for me?”

“Oh, you’ll like this. Tonight’s special is a tourist from ol’ Missourah. We’ve cleaned up his coke habit and given him a sluice down and that _appalling_ shirt, well, that just _had_ to go. I’m told he tastes like Gouda and regret, but I’ve never had a friend in cheeses.”

“You’re in a disturbingly good mood. What gives?”

“Fortunate circumstance it be, my dear Miss-Nothing Milliner, that’s all. While we wait for him to, a-ha-ha, _drip dry_ in my little boy’s room, shall we conduct our… usual affairs?”

Nadia rolls her eyes. Vandal’s insufferable when he’s cheerful. But… she needs him. He’s the only one who knows what she knows about just _why_ Mira knuckled under and gave Nadia the Proxy Kiss - even at arm’s length.

“Sure.”

He bows out of his booth, and a moment later there’s the soft click of a key in a lock. She’s aware not everyone gets to come back here; it’s against his “Queen Bitch’s rules”, and if he ever finds out how she got him to do it the _first_ time, there’ll be trouble.

He’d been all too keen to look her in the eyes, though.

In the sterile, antiseptic air of the public phlebotomy room, Nadia shrugs off her jacket and Vandal makes a great show of swabbing and sterilising the crook of her elbow. They run two tests, every time; blood and saliva, belt and braces, because Nadia can’t afford to be wrong about this. She force-feeds herself antivirals - some over the counter, some under it - and she goes through this with Vandal every month, and so far it’s working, but it’s only a matter of time.

Which is good, because she has zero idea how she’d get time out of the family affairs for full-on bone marrow therapy, or how the hell she’d hide it, or what would happen when the evidence came out, assuming any of it even _worked_.

These moments are the most awfully, joylessly tense ones of her life.

“Still good.” Vandal forces a smile at her, toothy and uneven and mad - the bedside manner of a ghoul. “You’re clean. Biologically speaking.”

Nadia sighs. “Thank fuck. Thanks, Vandal.”

“Shall we, then?”

* * *

“Ugh”, Nadia decides to say in the end, looking down at the swollen piglet of a man Vandal’s strapped in to his other chair. “Why do you never pick anyone _pretty_?”

“She pouts at me with lovely lips, her beauty just skin deep; but where it counts, she’s dying; won’t she join me for a reap?”

Laughter bubbles out of him, throaty and rich; in this room, she’s alone with the real Vandal Cleaver, and she can’t afford to forget it. He’s killed plenty of people handier than her. Then again, he’s alone with the real Nadia Milliner, and she’s not without a few surprises of her own.

Nadia looks down her nose at the specimen, parts her lips, flicks her tongue upon her teeth.

Here’s the rub of it. Knocking back a slug of vampire blood once a month or more has some _effects_. You don’t age. You get stronger, faster, tougher, as long as the blood’s in your system. If you’re smart, and if your friendly neighbourhood vampire decides to teach you, you can pick up a fraction of what they can do; it’s why Vandal can hear a pin drop at eighty paces and why looking into Nadia’s eyes means you’re a word away from doing exactly what she tells you, no questions asked.

Of course, you’re also _obsessed_ with the creature, and it feels enough like white-hot first love that a lot of dumb ghouls never learn better and a lot of cruel Kindred don’t bother to teach them until it’s funny. In a lot of cases, long term engagements mean other… aspects… of the donor’s nature are passed on; it’s why Vandal’s crazier now than he was in ‘02 and it’s why Nadia’s appetites have… flourished… to the extent that they have.

Also, the Blood brings the Beast with it - the predator that sizzles under the dead skin of every vampire in the world. In them, it’s only hungry for blood; that’s the only thing their cold bodies really crave. In the living, it has _options_.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Blood gets you horny as hell.

There are rumours about unscrupulous vampires who get their ghouls cranked up and lock them in a pen and just wait for nature to take its course. Equal parts blood sport and orgy. Fun for the whole family. Place your bets. Compared to that, what Nadia and Vandal get up to is pretty tame, really.

She’s not into him. She’s _not_. But he’s there, and he gets it, and more to the point, he gets what she _is_ into.

“You’ve checked him out too?”

“Do I tell _you_ how to do _your_ job?”

“… Fine.”

Here’s another fact for you; it takes surprisingly little blood for a human male to sustain an erection. It’s about four and a half fluid ounces, if you’re wondering. And if you’re at work on a dazed, confused subject, and if you’re clever and quick with a couple of cable ties, you can trap enough blood in there to keep things fresh for quite some time.

Nadia’s clever. And she usually carries a couple of cable ties. And condoms, and a diaphragm, and a spermicide, because you can’t be too careful.

She slips out of her top and jeans while Vandal prepares the chair’s occupant, and locates the final strap, and gets himself into position. She slips her briefs down over her hips, steps out of them, and picks up the pipette full of Mira’s filthy tainted blood.

It doesn’t have to be in this order. Not technically. Not physiologically. But to manage what the Blood does to her, to ride out that first wave and to keep Mira’s hold from closing on her completely, Nadia needs to be… distracted.

Which is why she’s on the chair, lowering herself… to this.

Press. Depress. The blood is cold, and heavy with anticoagulants. It tastes tinny and sharp, a dry insidious vintage sick-sick-slicking down her throat and blossoming chill and cruel into her.

It hurts. And she hates it. And she aches. And as the wave comes rushing in, the yearning, she rocks back and forth on some total stranger, and she flushes, and Vandal laughs like a fucking drain as he pulls the strap tight across their Missouri tourist’s neck.

Nadia gasps. She rides out his last moments on taut thighs, the Beast loose and out for glory, Mira’s blood still soaking through her. As her heartbeat settles and her sweat cools - it’s fast, in the icy air of this room tucked in behind the freezers - she leans forward, resting her forehead on Vandal’s.

Hesitantly, haltingly, he brushes some stray hair behind Nadia’s ear. She shuts her eyes, so she doesn’t have to face his gimlet smile. She’s surprised at how tender his fingers are against her cheek. She’s even more surprised when she reaches up to touch his hand.


	5. they are gathered for the feast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AWOOGA! A Warning!
> 
> Those of you who are either purely here for the Life Is Strange characters or of a sensitive disposition may wish to skip Chapters 4 and 5, which are all about spending some time with our antagonists and discovering why they do the awful things they do.
> 
> If you do not wish to skip Chapters 4 and 5, check out the tags and be warned: this is where it starts getting fucked up. That’s why I’m posting two chapters at once. I hope you gave yourself a break after 4, looked after yourself, bleached your brain if you had to. Going into 5, just… hold tight and think of Amberprice. We’ll be back with the girls next time, I promise.

Vandal chuckles to himself as he unfastens the straps on the chair, redressing the corpse with the matter-of-fact efficiency of a man for whom this, my dear, is Tuesday. John Doe, John Hancock, John-Paul-George-and-Ringo, John the fucking Baptist for all he cares, they’re all the same when they’re in the freezer and waiting.

This is absolutely his favourite part of the job. He’s got his knives, and he’s got a body, and he’s got to stage a death by massive blood loss that looks plausible, and he’s got to do it all by midnight because he’s got a Reason, a capital-R watertight Reason, to intrude on his Goddess again.

He’d be in a good mood even if he hadn’t just done that. Therese has a controlling interest, the majority stake in his achey breaky heart, but plenty of other parts of him appreciate the Giovanni do-girl’s… lust for life. A-ha. A-ha.

She’s a pretty thing, for sure, and he’s spent a lot less on harlotry since she started stopping by, but what he really likes is the _efficiency_ of it. Never a death wasted with her; she likes to watch, and even if she’s at arm’s length he can read the heat and the hunger in her face and the hovering colours around her that _she_ will never see.

> Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? 

Vandal whistles while he works, heavy knife in one hand, hatchet in the other.

“ _Crawl_ on me, _sink_ into me, _die_ for me… _blood_ on her skin, _dripping_ with sin, _do_ it again…”

That’s probably enough. He goes for one last blow, to be on the safe side. For Nadia’s sake, he’ll give this naughty boy a good hard scrub before wheeling him into a freezer. Wouldn’t do to have any suspicious questions asked.

For the Masquerade too, of course.

But if he’s going to go soft, it might as well be like this.

He hoiks his boy onto a gurney, and goes about his business. Shower, shit and a shave, as it were, and then the dull part; rattling off a nice little report to dot the eyes and cross the tees so he can say “of _course_ someone did the autopsy, the report is right _here_ , and the fuzz dropped him _off_ , don’t you _remember_?”

That’s why this place has to be so short-staffed. Nice deep cracks for all the filth to fall into. Nobody has time to remember every poor fucker they pick up, and this one will be on his way to the crem before the week is out, because look, _the file is done_ , and life’s too short.

It’s almost easy.

And once that’s done, he has his other little job to do.

* * *

Nadia’s out of the side door well before ten. The ache in her veins is still there - _Mira, Mira, Mira_ , on the edge of imagination - but she’s also sore and sated and slightly perplexed. The last thing she’d been expecting was a moment of tenderness, off the back of a moment of… them being them.

This is what happens when people let their guard down. This is what happens when people get to know each other too well. This is what happens when you take it outside the family.

Mira’s going to _kill_ her if she finds out.

But then… Mira’s going to kill her anyway, in the end.

She must be glowing as she walks back to the station, with a cooler full of that dead man’s blood in her hand. Glowing, but nervous; vulnerable, in other words. Will someone start shit? Will they dare?

Let them come. The Blood’s settling in to her, filling her with caustic Giovanni confidence. One look in her eyes and they’ll crumble; one backhanded swing with her switchblade and their throats will rip open.

Never mind that she’s never actually killed someone herself. Never mind that there are stronger people than a pumped-up little ghoul on the streets. The thoughts trot out automatically, regimented little things that click-clack into her three-way-split consciousness. There’s always something worse than you out there.

The crowd bobs her along, to and fro. Busy people, having a great time here in Santa Monica, at the start of the season. Sixty degrees and a little over nineteen ounces every night; mostly in the bottle, a little in the roll. Nadia sniffs the air. Smog and weed and sweat and asphalt. Smells alive. And she smells of hospitals and cold sweat melting again in the rising heat, of sex and death and antiseptic wipes.

She bobs and bounces on the balls of her feet, impatient. Impatient in the way all locals are in tourist towns - _move your ass, dammit, some of us have to live here_ \- and impatient personally, because she doesn’t get to sleep so much and she needs to get home and she needs a shower and _she needs Mira_ , dammit, _she needs Mira more than anything_ , no no no, even the contempt she knows she’ll receive in return for this most minor of graceful evasions, _fuck! Fuck!_

She needs Mira, and a man died tonight to take the edge off this, and what galls Nadia is that it wasn’t enough. It’s _never_ enough.

As the crowd bleats and shuffles and breathes all around her, Nadia Milliner stares up at the fuggy, filthy sky and curses. She knows a great many curses, but somehow, most of them don't seem right for right now.

“Oh, balls.”

* * *

Hm.

Vandal hadn’t quite thought this far ahead.

Cross-referencing wasn’t exactly easy on the hospital’s poorly-optimised budget-architecture database that nobody (absolutely nobody) kept 100% up to date anyway, but he’d persevered. He’d dug his way down to the blood bank registry (at least Paige makes an effort) and sorted by address and found them. Names, numbers, ranks, religions, regiments, blood types, histories and, crucially, addresses.

Sort by address, find 508, done and done and thank you drive through. Chloe Price and Rachel Amber. Rachel Amber and Chloe Price. Names logged against numbers and numbers are easy to find if you just rifle through the fridges. Fresh blood’s at the back. The stuff that’ll perish first is at the front. It’s routine enough business from there on in.

Except…

He doesn’t actually know which name goes with which girl, and which girl goes with which bag.

Bitch Princess wants _one_ of the girls.

Bitch Princess will cut his dick off, stick it up her ass and make him pull it out of there with his fucking _teeth_ if she’s unhappy. Or she’ll pay a half-dozen gangbangers to bushwhack him between the Asylum and home with the promise of a go on those big pale vampire titties when they're done. She’s done it before when someone’s _disappointed_ her. She lacks her sister’s sweet sophistication but her methods, while crude, are undeniably effective. Jeanette’s temper isn’t frowns and withdrawal; it’s chains and knives and everything you own ripped to shreds and slathered in someone else’s viscera. When she pouts, the whole world tries to make her smile; when she scowls, the world had better know what’s going to hit it.

“You’re taking an awful risk here, Vandal,” he Peter-Cushings (badly) to himself. “This had better _work_.”

He stuffs both bags, and his printouts from the database, into a coolbag. He pulls down the shutters and makes his way out the side door, muttering a blessing of sorts to himself, a benediction:

“If I should die, think only this of me… I hate your lousy face and always have.”

His good moods never get to last.

* * *

The Metro isn’t kind. Massive overloading. Delays in her downtown change. Nadia calls a cab, but it doesn’t do much better until it’s clear of Sunset, and then she’s most of the way home anyway. At two a/m, she’s sneaking in the back way, through the indoor pool room. White marble and chrome and stark black skylight frame, like everything in the mansion: whatever else you can say about Bruno Giovanni, he knows his own taste and he sticks to it ruthlessly. She unfastens the inner door with the passkey that opens damn near everything for two storeys above ground and one level below.

It’s still not good enough. The door swings outward, and it clips Nadia’s forehead, shoving her back toward the pool; she staggers, grabs the ladderhead, just about manages to stay upright.

It’s obvious that Mira Giovanni and Nadia Milliner are related. Distantly, mind, but there’s the same sleek black hair. (Mira’s is cut a little shorter, and scooped back to frame her face, while Nadia lets her bangs grow long). The same olive skin. (Mira’s less angular, but her skin’s somehow harder and whiter; Nadia’s in a position to maintain her tan, and she puts her hand up to studying on the roof in summertime). The same something in the eye; a glitter in the dark. (Mira’s is hungry. Nadia’s is curious. There’s an important distinction there, and it has to do with how you approach satiating them both.)

It’s equally obvious that Mira Giovanni is pissed.

“You’re late.” Mira strides through the double doors, lets them swing shut behind her, and treats Nadia to a backhanded slap before she’s even had the chance to say _sorry_ or _please_ or _mistress_ or anything of the sort. The Blood rushes to her cheek, scarlet and hot; _what did I do, Mira, Mira, how do I fix this…_ “And I don’t need to ask why, do I?”

Nadia bites her tongue. It doesn’t matter what she says. The only thing to say is nothing. Silence, silence… the only thing that pleases Mira is her silent assent, her present absence. It’s been that way since the first drop of Mira’s blood passed her lips:

_“Listen carefully. I’m doing this because Uncle Bruno says so. That is the only reason. Doing this, for you, makes me **sick**. I don’t want you cringing after me, pulling your hair and weeping, telling me you **love** me. I don’t want you to fucking **touch** me. You’ll come when you’re called, you’ll do what you’re told, and you’ll stay in your fucking box until I need you, **diga**. Do you understand?”_

Nadia should be grateful for the warning - she should be grateful for _anything_ Mira says or does - because after all, it’s knowing Mira hates her and the very idea of her that gives her any leeway at all. It would be worse if Mira gave a shit about her walking, talking possession. But the Blood doesn’t know that. The Beast doesn’t know that. It cowers in her veins and it whimpers when it’s whipped and it nuzzles the hand that wields the crop - love me, it howls, taking hold of Nadia’s voice and throttling her from the inside out.

“I don’t give a shit who’s been fucking you. You’re _mine_ , bitch. You’re here when I need you and you’re out of my sight when I don’t.” One hand seizes the cooler from where Nadia’s let it drop. The other has her by the throat, thumb under her jaw, forcing her eyeline onto Mira’s. “And right now, I don’t. So go clean yourself up.”

Mira lets go. The Command goes through Nadia’s head like a bullet, leaves an exit wound in her ego. It carries her down the pool ladder, slow and demure, until her mistress loses her patience, straightens out her palm, and smacks Nadia in the throat.

Choking, gasping, Nadia topples back into the pool; in that moment of winded shock she tries to breathe underwater. She’s not sure how she makes the surface, fighting for breath and life, blinded by her own straggling hair and by chlorine and by the red mist in her eyes and the thin line between love and hate, but she does; and she makes her own way to the ladder; and she climbs her own way to the top, waits on her knees while the water and bile pour out of her.

Nadia lives to obey.

But she’s not going to live forever.

* * *

Vandal hates the Asylum. Hates it. Hates the press of stupid, stupid little boys and girls dressed up like things in the dark, not knowing they’re in the lair of the beast and she’s coiling around them, sensuous and serpentine, in all their fantasies and wild ideations, a hand down their pants and her teeth in their neck.

None of it’s _real_ to them, that’s their problem. It’s dreams of wine and poses, trading words for the deeds Vandal does and the half-life he leads, feigning a malice they’ve never felt and never will.

He shuffles between them, a shabby figure in a room of regalia and promenade, growls at a couple of them who jostle him. Where the hell is the Bitch Princess? Isn’t she supposed to run this show?

When the music stops for just a second or two longer than it should, he knows he’s in trouble. When [it starts again](https://youtu.be/uX3Gw82f6GU), he punches himself in the thigh and swears and swears and swears but silently, inside his head, because now he knows he’s been seen and she’s watching and she’s fucking with him like she always does.

> A celebrated man amongst the gurneys  
>  They can fix me proper with a bit of luck  
>  The doctors and the nurses they adore me so  
>  But it’s really quite alarming ‘cause I’m such an awful fuck…

She’s leaning on the balcony, looking down at her people with that sickly smile and those come-hither eyes, that sweet face that says love love love, here for the taking, vampires will never hurt you, I’ll bring you into my arms and into my bed and into my body and you’ll _never_ live to regret it.

The crowd fucking laugh it up. They sing along and they cheer and quite a few of them start making out. A kid in a swish velvet coat clasps his hands to his chest and vaudevilles his way across the stage and Vandal vows _he’s fucking next_.

He snarls and shoves his way to the elevator while they’re still laughing. _She_ joins him at the top, both doors hissing open to admit the Bitch and let her lead her Slave to the inner sanctum.

Jeanette tugs him along - she’d be scampering if she had the shoes for it - and throws him onto the bed. She sits down on her desk and plants a boot between his legs, heavy sole resting where nobody wants a boot to be, and she looks down the length of leg and leather and buckles at him and licks her teeth and giggles.

“Twice in one lifetime? You’re _spoiling_ me.”

“Here for Therese,” he mumbles through clenched teeth. “She said… you were _interested_ in some girl.”

“Oh, and you found her? You’re a clever Cleaver, aren’cha? Spill the beans, ghoulfiend; gimme the deets!” Jeanette’s off-colour eyes sparkle and whirl; Vandal feels them tug and twist at his senses, pulling him in and pushing him off balance. His fingers tighten on his bag and on the bedsheets and he holds on for grim death:

“For Therese, white mistress-mischief… she said…”

The boot presses down, and her face contorts like the baddest of bad trips, drawing him deeper into her delirium; it’s a lot like drowning in those eyes. Everything looks… wrong. Distance is time. Time is money. The walls are closing in, but the floor’s a world away.

“Wrong answer, Vandal Savage! What’s hers is mine, and baby knows it. You’re not _leaving_ here until you cash your check, and I know you must be holdin’ or you’d have been a good boy and sent a little birdie.

“Only… samples. Both girls… swung by my clinic. I know where they _live_. What I _don’t_ know is which bitch is which, witch, I _swear_.”

“Story of your life. Huh. Well, as I said to Alanis, it’s a little bit ironic, but mostly, you just _suck_!” The boot draws back and up, then shoots out, slamming into his chest and knocking him onto his back. “ _I’ll_ be taking those and don’t worry, baby boy, I’ll be sure they get to Therese, and you know _why_? Because they mean I’ll get the childe _I_ want.”

Jeanette scoops up the coolbag, clasps it to her chest, waltzes it round the room with a trilling, cascading laugh; she seems to go on forever, cooing to the little bundles of blood in her arms, singing sweetly and painfully just a little off-key.

“I dunno who you are or what you do or where you go when you’re not around…”

He rolls sideways, boneless, off the bed, wriggles along, claws himself up the wall on hands and knees. Bitch Princess is miles away now, her personality’s bouncing off the walls and he’s safe if he can only reach the door… the door… before she gets bored… the door’s on the floor… the door… the floor…

“I don’t know anything about you, baby, but you’re everything I’m dreaming of…”

Breathe. Breathe. He got lucky. Dementation and a kicking: a lot less than he expected. It’s like being drunk and being spiked and being lost in a place you should know all at once, that nagging feeling that reality’s _there_ on the edge of the fucking fog. He knows the way. Just stick to the wall… stick to the wall… fly on the wall, fly on the windshield…

“I don’t know who you are, but you’re a real dead ringer for love…”

The door gives way as he fumbles his way along to it, catching the handle. Vandal half-falls, half-crawls through it and down the hall, all the way to the elevator. He thumps the DOWN button and sits there, hugging his aching chest, waiting for a transport of delight. Back to the Asylum. Away from the lunatic who’s taken over.

* * *

The bathroom door swings open. She’s scrubbed away Jeanette’s makeup, and she’s wearing Therese’s heavy-rimmed glasses, but there’s no point in putting on the suit. Not when all she’s going to do is slip into bed, pour herself a glass of something special, and find out about this girl who’s got her sister so worked up. Well. Fifty-fifty chance, anyway. Maybe she’ll petition her Prince for two childer - one apiece? That would be a happy ending, if the other girl’s at all up to snuff.

That’s jumping the gun, though. She has their number, she has their names, and she’ll be paying them a call some day soon, but right now, Therese wants to get to know the girl in the only way that really counts.

Fifty-fifty chance. Choose the left, or the right. One of those little choices of which life is made, that don’t seem so significant at the time, but they can be huge in retrospect.

Life is strange like that.

Therese makes her choice. Pops the bag. Fills her crystal glass; oh, she’d normally make Vandal do this, but Jeanette’s given him a rough enough time of it already, and she honestly can’t be bothered getting dressed up just to deal with the little pervert.

She smooths the girls’ paperwork out on her knees and peruses, between sips. Delicate, gentle sips; not the savagery of the starved Beast, but the clinical appraisal of the aesthete. Therese has never been one for passion - certainly, she cares about what she does, but that’s a healthy and natural ambition, that’s pride in a job well done.

She’s never been…

She takes a longer sip. And a longer. And then, before she quite knows what’s happening, Therese pounds the glass and lets it fall, sinking back into her bed.

She’s never… what was she thinking, again?

She’s compromised with Jeanette over the years, invested in something that has a little class and a little quality, talked her into Egyptian cotton over satin, but allowed a little more indulgence than is her wont, and right now it feels a lot more… welcoming.

Her teeth grind in her mouth, points sliding over tongue and gums. She’s breathing despite herself - Therese makes a point of only breathing when she wants to speak - and there’s something in her eyes. Lights. So many lights. Like… stars, dancing on the ceiling and the walls. Starlight from inside her eyes, shining out; or is it in the walls, beyond the walls, shining in? Are there walls? Are their stars? Is there anything but light, and shade?

Pinpricked by starlight, Therese shoves the covers off herself, rolling her head around on her neck. She’s warm. Warmer than she’s been in decades; warmer than her cold dead body should ever feel.

Therese has never known pleasure, as such. She knows… satisfaction. The temporary fulfilment of a job well done, before the next presents itself; the fleeting joy of acquisition, before greed takes the helm. But she doesn’t Kiss. She doesn’t touch, or like to be touched. She drinks decanted, preserved, chemically saturated blood from a crystal glass, and pretends it’s a choice. She… shudders… at the thought of this body, her twin, writhing under a lover (again), pinned by some man who wants… service… a good girl… such a good girl…

Power is Therese’s pleasure. She sublimates what Jeanette indulges. That’s what _distinguishes_ her, and if she’s not distinguished, she’s _extinguished_.

The lights in her head and the lights on the wall are changing, shifting, blurring, glowing. Stars are fire. Fire in the night, in the endless black of deep dark space. Why didn’t she realise? The sun would be safe if it was only further away, like the stars are. No; dead, like the stars are. Gone out before their light can reach her. Dead light for dead bodies. It’s obvious. Turn out the sun and the world is theirs.

Therese laughs - she _never_ laughs, she never finds anything _remotely_ amusing - and watches the pretty flames climb higher. Red. Red. Red. Isn’t she supposed to be afraid of fire? There’s an Old Country word for it. The fear. But how can she fear what’s inside her, flickering through her, turning stale cold veins to feeling living loving warmth?

Writhing. Skin on skin. Legs crossed tight at the knee, thighs pressed tight together. Keep the flame inside.

She fumbles on a bedside table - the one on her right hand side - for her phone. She has to share this. She has to… she has to know…

 **Therese** : … is this what it feels like to be you?

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** ffs no

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** this is double-d different

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** i'm actually scared now

 **Therese:** What IS she?

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** fuccin beautiful is what she is

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** we can’t turn her T

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** i want this so bad

 **Therese:** I agree. This is SENSATIONAL.

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** are you getting off on this?

 **Therese:** … maybe?

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** omg

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** me too

 **Therese:** well obviously

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** This is… I’ve never felt anything like this.

 **xxx_jEAnEttE:** Call Vandal. We can’t let her get away.

 **Therese:** in the morning ok?

The phones fall to the soft, plush carpet floor.

Tourette slides her hands between her legs.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been slowly reading through rednightmare’s EXCELLENT [Desert of Ghosts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313323/chapters/27993021) this week, and I suspect it shows. If you’re looking for a deep dark slow-burn political take on the VtM: Bloodlines setting, you couldn’t do better.
> 
> Also: I won’t lie, I’m hype about Chapters 4 and 5, ‘cause I finally got to write my favourite necrophile. Considering that she gets a handful of lines in an environment some playthroughs simply cruise on by, and you don’t get to see the best of those lines without an otherwise very suboptimal build, I am disproportionately attached to Nadia.
> 
> In my heart of hearts, I someday hope to do for her what Moonfreckle has done for Vandal - just keep pushing at the boundaries of her potential until she blossoms into the awful little corpse-flower she’s quite capable of being.
> 
> Anyway. Here we are. I hope you're still with me after all that... malarkey. Let's get back to Chloe and Rachel for a while, eh?
> 
> ADDITIONAL: the rate of updates is probably going to slow for a few weeks. I have a (temporary, trial) promotion at work (which I didn't ask for) and it's going to eat a lot of my writing spoons. I also have to prepare for a conference in February, which means doing research and using more writing spoons for _that_. I'm still chipping away at this when I have the time and the impetus and new chapters will still be coming, but don't expect one every few days for a while. Sozzers.


	6. rising up through the air

Time passes.

Chloe’s new gig is actually pretty cool. Tommy’s pissed that he has to tow her to work on his first day, but he’s a lot less pissed when she talks him through what she can see needs repairing, ‘fuckamabobs’ and all. The technical name, apparently, is ‘fuckama _jig_ ’, and she’s not to forget it, and it’s the first time she laughs at one of his muted, surly jokes.

She gets assigned the pieces of shit that are never going to drive again, for a full teardown before Tommy gets in the crane and stacks the hulls deeper in the yard. Flip the bonnet and inspect, pull out the electrics, strip off the tyres, basically rip out everything that might still be usable or valuable. It’s work, but it’s not exactly work - or maybe Chloe just enjoys wrecking stuff for a perfectly good reason.

Thunder’s around, rolling in around lunchtime on a bike that’s basically the bigger, uglier cousin of the one she remembers; a roadhog where the last one was a razorback. Yes, it still has traditional Samoan decor and yes, Chloe still rips him for it - “Flowers? For me? You shouldn’t have, dude” - and Thunder rolls his eyes and slaps her on the back and tells her not to blow it. He’s on the road during the day, manning the towtruck - “’cause he can’t fit his fat ass in the crane cab and driving in Santa Monica’s bad for my fuckin’ blood pressure,” as Tommy explains - and takes over security at night. They both work something like sixteen hour days, Tommy turning in before midnight and Thunder knocking off around eight a/m.

Chloe starts on eight hours, but soon it’s more like nine or ten so she doesn’t have to leave a job half done and Tommy doesn’t have to stop explaining something and pick it up in the morning.

On Friday night she comes home with a roll of grimy five and ten dollar bills, and Rachel takes her out to Chinatown to celebrate.

The roll’s looking skinnier by midweek, but they get by on leftovers and ‘late lunches’ for a day or two. Chloe starts to worry, but by then it’s been two weeks and Rachel figures she can top up their funds if she just swings by the blood bank again.

That’s where it all starts going wrong.

* * *

 

Most days, Rachel hits the boardwalks and the cafés, leeching whatever public WiFi she can get, doing the diligence. Agents and agencies, contacts and fees, photographers and talent scouts - the messages fly out and only a very very few of them fall back in. Every night Chloe comes home and Rachel puts on a smile for her, but every night the smile’s a little thinner, she’s just a little bit more frustrated. She doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Rejection would be something, but a lot of the time she’s just… being ignored.

It’s Paige who starts the ball rolling. Rachel’s in the chair, and Paige is chattering away as she does, and the words flutter out of her like the first stray spark on a dry summer’s day:

“Oh, hey. If you’re still hurting for money, you should check out the Aslyum. They always need new hires for the summer, and I bet you could _rock_ their style.”

Rachel’s facade must have flickered, because the look on Paige’s face is pure ouch. May as well roll with it, she figures: “Ugh. No thanks. We stopped by there the first night, and this goth chick came on to me, like… she said some shit that freaked Chloe the hell out. I don’t want to face that kind of shit every night.”

“Was she… did she have blond pigtails, and sort of David Bowie eyes… hetero-chromic, that’s the word I’m looking for! And… I’m not being rude here, but dressed kinda slutty?”

Rachel nods, deliberately not saying _you mean like a massive ho-demon, risen from slut hell to bang me?_ and Paige goes on, smiling slightly: “That’s Jeanette. She’s… OK, she’s a bitch, but she’s like a fixture there. I used to hang out there every night back when I was a student and she was all over the place then, too. Did she tell you she owns the club?”

“Oh God, she _owns_ the place? No way in hell am I - ”

“No no no, she doesn’t. She’s… big news on the scene and all, but her sister Therese actually owns the place. And some other stuff around here. My apartment block, for one thing. Therese is… I won’t say she’s _nice_ , she’s kinda creepy sometimes, but she’s the best landlord I’ve ever had. She’s rich, she’s well connected, I know for a fact she’s on the board of the Nocturne Theater downtown and she’s got friends in Hollywood… I’m sure she can help you _somehow_.”

“I’ll think about it,” says Rachel, and she’s still officially thinking about it when the needle’s out and she’s on her way home. She’s smouldering. Embers of what Jeanette had said to her turning over, glowing red and hot in the depths of her memory. She’d buried them, but she’d not forgotten. She’d just… not wanted to remember.

“ _Come back when you’re ready to be possessed…_ "

* * *

 

When Chloe gets home from work that night, she’s barely even crossed the room to kiss Rachel before she realises Rachel’s pissed, and keeping a lid on it, but barely. The last days back home were like this: Rachel pacing the floor, straight out of Blackwell and aching to be on the road and seething. She’d spent a lot on Frank - spent a lot of time with Frank, too - and honestly, Chloe would have worried about losing her if Frank hadn’t been even _less_ likely to get her ass out of Arcadia Bay.

In the end they’d cleared their bank accounts and called in every favour going and gotten the hell out before Rachel could explode, and it had all turned out… mostly OK.

Chloe had been hoping all this was behind them now.

It’ll take more than a kiss to fix this, but that’s a good start. She strokes Rachel’s cheeks, holding her there just a little longer than usual - _I love you and whatever this is, we’ve got it,_ that’s what Chloe thinks as hard as she can and hopes it transmits through her lips - before she breaks away.

“Mm. How was work?”

“Cool. Exhausting, but cool. We broke up a newer-model Ford, so… maybe parts, at last. I’ll be street legal before you can spit. How was blood?”

“Ugh. Weird. That nurse - Paige or whatever - was trying to fix me up with a job at the Asylum. Said the owner was _connected,_ like I’m supposed to care…”

“That’s good, though,” says Chloe, and when Rachel’s deadpan eyes make her realise it’s not good, she adds “… right?”

“Chloe, this is totally a scam. She signs me up and strings me along, all ‘one day I’ll introduce you to my powerful friends’ and in the meantime I’m stuck sleeping all day and making minimum wage at her sister’s goth dive all night. I didn’t come down here to do that…”

“OK, fair. You came down here to live your dream and get your ass into the movies, and I want that for you. I really do. But I can’t drive you to auditions in my piece of shit truck, and I can’t pay for headshots and agents and whatever-the-fuck-else you need, and you can’t keep making fifty bucks a week giving blood forever. So what if she’s screwing with you? It’s a job. It’s money. And we are Officially. Fucking. Poor.”

“God, don’t say it like _that_.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re pronouncing a fucking sentence on me!” Rachel laughs, but now it’s Chloe’s turn to set her mouth all straight and level, tip her head and say ‘no, this is all wrong’. She’s just _realised_ , after all. The penny’s just dropped.

“You’ve never had to live like this, have you? Like - working whatever’s going, paying the bills, actually having to worry about money. This is all new to you, right?”

“I guess, but - ”

“But what? Rachel, this is my whole _life_. Ever since Dad died I’ve had to think about how much everything costs and how much everything’s worth. And it sucks, but it’s a fact of fuckin’ life. We can’t - you can’t - afford to say no to money right now.”

“So what? You want me to knuckle down and get my hands dirty, I’ll do it, but I’m not going to throw our plan away just so I can be creepy Jeanette’s creepy sister’s wage slave. OK?”

The words rise out of Chloe’s throat before she can bite them back. Rachel could have upped and slapped her and it’d have hurt less than those words that cut through her fatigue and the ache in her arms and back. The words that punctured her deep inside and spilled bile up through her soul and out of her mouth. “What did you just say?”

“What? I said I’m not going to be a wage slave - ”

“Yeah, well, of the two of us, in this room, which of us earns a fucking wage? Which one of us even knows what that’s like? You are talking about me and to me and right to my face, Rache!” Chloe growls - it’s that strangled _aaaagh_ she hasn’t used since they left Joyce and David and James and Rose and all that bullshit behind them. “And you’re talking about my mom, too, and do you know she never thought her job was worth shit and she always wanted me to go to college or whatever and get a fucking _salary_ and do _better_?”

“And what, I’m stopping you doing that?”

“You already have!”

Beat.  
Beat.

Chloe’s heart is doing nineteen to the dozen. She _knows_ this feeling - it’s the feeling of the moral high ground dropping out from under her feet because she’s let herself get mad, she’s let her mouth get ahead of her brain, and now it’s first-to-the-parachutes time, get out before this argument starts to crash and burn.

Rachel’s eyes, lips, shoulders - they’re all pulling in, tensing, narrowing. Chloe’s only ever seen her look at one person like this. Fucking _James_. Oh God. What the hell has she done?

“I didn’t - ” Chloe starts to say, right as Rachel says “Shut up.”

Usually, people fight her. They reach out. They try to reconcile. They ask questions. They give opinions. They make challenges. They come at her and she can’t say no to a fight, so she takes them on.

But this is Rachel. Rachel Freaking Amber, who always knows exactly what to say to make Chloe putty in her hands. Or maybe it’s the way she says it; that feeling that the world’s just shut up because she said so.

“Everything you’ve ever done for me, you’ve done by choice, Chloe. I’ve never stood there with a knife at your throat or a gun at your head and made you do jack. I’ve asked you and you’ve had my back because you _wanted_ to. I didn’t make you take the fall for me and get kicked out of Blackwell. I didn’t make you try to buy off Damon Merrick and nearly get yourself killed. And I sure as hell didn’t make you get in your truck and drive to Santa Monica.”

_But you did. You didn’t need a knife. You didn’t need a gun. You just had to be hurting, and I’d do… anything to make that stop._

Chloe can’t say it. She can’t blame Rachel for this. There are tears welling up in her, tears and sobs that’ll break the heavens open and rain down on them both and wash this awful moment away into the deep Pacific blue if she just lets them, but she can’t.

Because if she does, it’ll be Rachel’s fault.

“ _You_ did that,” says Rachel. “And I _thought_ you were doing it because you loved me.”

“I _do_!” The word whines out of her, spilling out like baby’s first stamped-feet hands-in-pockets tantrum. “I love you and I love Santa Monica and I love this fucking awful apartment but I can’t live on love and dreams, Rache! That’s all this is about, OK? Living. For real! Don’t make this a fucking thing, just…”

As Chloe trails off, Rachel looks at her. Cold. Level. “I’m going out. For a fucking run or something. Don’t call me. I’ll…” Rachel scoops up her phone and keys, stuffs them into shirt pockets and knots the sleeves around her waist. “I’ll be back when I’m too tired to be pissed.”

The door slams behind her, but it’s not ‘til her footsteps fade and the main door slams too that Chloe actually feels she can throw herself down on the bed where Rachel was and cry.

* * *

[ **Goddess** : You’re needed.]

[ **Goddess** : If that Amber girl has been in again, bring her.]

[ **Goddess** : ASAP, Vandal.]

The messages are there minutes after sundown.

This is the sixth time in the last fortnight.

He’s _explained_ it to the Queen Bitch - the girl is not on tap unless Vandal puts her there, unless he pulls her in properly, straps her into the chair, _keeps_ her there, and Lord how he’d like to do that right now because it would make his life so much _easier_. But Queen Bitch says _no no no_ to that because Bitch Princess is _curious_ , so he just has to endure this. And there are rules. Fourteen regulation days.

Queen Bitch isn’t usually impatient. Well: no. Minute to minute, yes. Always the impression there’s something she’d rather be doing with her time. Rather: she’s never _demanding_. Never _thirsty_. Never so concerned with a particular body among the throng, a particular beast in the stockyard. She demands _quality_ but without _specificity_. She is a creature of cold routine and passionless greed. Vandal knows this. That’s why he’s standing in the shower muttering to himself.

“Don’t like this. Don’t trust this. Why’s she care all of a sudden? Never cares where it comes from. Blood, and money. Money, and blood. The flow and futility. The wheels turn round.”

He lets himself out after the door slams on the tail of an argument. Trouble in paradise? Everybody hurts, darling, and tears are all the company _he_ needs. It’s tempting to stick his head in the door and gloat, but he doesn’t want it chewed off; not when there’s trouble brewing for him, too.

Another message comes through while he’s on his way to the blood bank.

[ **Goddess** : Get over here. I don’t appreciate being kept waiting.]

Vandal skips breakfast. He doesn’t even bother unlocking the shutter; heads straight in, riffs through the day book, and sighs a deep sigh of relief. Fourteen regulation days have passed and the girl was evidently still desperate enough to stick a needle in her arm for fifty bucks and earn some breathing room for Mrs. Cleaver’s little boy. Not that she knew or cared.

He does something, this time, that he may come to regret. It’s an effort of will for him, but he’s _allowed_. He’s not _disobeying_ her. Queen Bitch is getting what she wants. He’s just _concerned_. He pops the bag and takes a little tiny sample, just a syringeful or two. One for him. One for… backup. He needs help here. Someone’s got to check this stuff out. If only he knew someone who knew a damn thing about blood and magic and all kinds of weird shit -

\- oh wait. He _does_. Time for her to do _him_ a favour for a change.

The plastic plug pops back into place, and the bag slips into the cooler - plus a couple of others, because one’s not going to keep her going for two weeks even if it is so very very special - and Vandal slips out the door. He composes messages as he walks, once he’s well clear of the building, not seen out of place.

[ **Slave** : I hear and obey. The special is available.]

Flip and flick. Change gears; change conversation.

[ **Vandaleyes** : Can my best ghoul come out to play? I’ve a puzzle: you may have the solution.]

No answer. Phone back in his pocket, he crosses the street, snarls at a tourist (though his heart isn’t in it), and lets himself into the Asylum. It’s quiet, this early, and for that at least he’s grateful. He takes a moment to ask big Cal behind the bar if boss-lady’s been a little _not_ _herself_ lately, and normally the oaf just looks at Vandal with contempt, but this time he nods assent and claims “they’ve both been climbin’ the goddamn walls all week. You’d better have some good shit in that little bag.”

Bless him. He’s taken Vandal for a dealer since day one, and honestly, he’s not far wrong. Vandal makes his excuses and his way to the elevator, in that approximate order, and enters the inner sanctum.

Queen Bitch looks a little out of sorts. Her glasses are making a spectacle of themselves, conspicuous by their absence from her face and their presence on the desk. Her hair’s a little less than prim and proper - a little loose, maybe even a little frazzled. Her jacket’s buttoned, but only by one out of three. And her manner - oh, how her manner has changed.

“Good. You’re here.”

“And I'm your humble servile, always. I stand ready to fill your glass, and - ”

“Spare me. I’ll _serve_ myself tonight.” She looks at the cooler; do the arches of her nostrils flare? Does she bare her teeth - show scabs and scratches on her lips, invisible to eyes not honed by a decade of the Blood? That darkness under her eyes, those lines across her brow - have they always been there? While he wonders, she hands him an envelope - unaddressed, unlabelled, but sealed. “I need you to drop this off. Urgently. Immediately, in fact.”

It’s in his hand before he knows what’s what, and he stares at it for a second. “Ah-a - of course. For you, anything. Though - an address would serve my service well…”

“Your neighbour. _Don’t_ be seen. Deliver it _tonight_.”

Vandal bites his lips and clicks his heels and fights himself not to shake his head. “I - of course. By the bye, sweet mistress, our _reserve_ is running dry; I’d appreciate permission to _refill_.”

“Hm? Oh. Yes, of course. You know your responsibilities, Vandal. Continue… living up to them.”

Her eyes are fixed on the cooler by his feet. Of a sudden, as if the Imp of the Perverse chatters on his shoulder, Vandal feels the powerful urge to stamp down his foot on it, scatter the contents. A shudder passes through him. He won’t. He _won’t_. _He won’t._

“ _Go_.”

Vandal’s shiver goes all the way from his shoulders down to his toes. Why do this to him? The order’s enough; this stoking and damping of the Passions, this meddling with the humours, it’s not called for.

And until tonight, it’s always been Bitch Princess’ thing.

He’s dead inside all the way down in the elevator, barely breathing, barely registering as he makes his way out into the street and shambles home on autopilot, walking like a dead man, talking like no man at all.

It doesn’t pass until the paper’s in the slot.

Fuck everything. The bank can go without its minder tonight. The parasites can bite each other’s asses.

Vandal takes out his phone and gets ready to call in sick, and but his smile gets there first.

[ **Nadiamantic** : Sorry. Playing fetch for Madam. Big familia thing this weekend.]

[ **Nadiamantic** : You’ve got me interested though.]

[ **Nadiamantic** : Come to Moore’s on Melrose, let’s say Friday, before dark? My treat.]

* * *

 

It’s been a while. It’s dark outside. Chloe’s not been watching the clock at all. She tugged her beanie over the alarm clock and kept her thumb over the top of her phone when she could, and she’s been keeping herself busy. Fixing what she can fix. Ignoring what she can’t.

_It can’t be Rachel’s fault._

What Rachel said doesn’t matter. What Rachel did doesn’t matter. As long as she comes back.

When the keys rattle in the door, Chloe spins in the chair, shoots up, makes sure she’s standing _right_ inside.

“Shh - don’t say anything. Check this out.” Chloe turns the phone in her hands and shows it to Rachel.

“What am I looking at here?”

“I did some Googling while you were gone. Go more than three clicks deep into any business round here and there’s a name that keeps on coming up. Therese Voerman is a playah. It’s not just the Asylum… she owns half the property in Santa Monica. Look. Storage depots, coffee houses, couple hotels, a fucking _art_ _gallery_.”

“I’ve… got something too.” Rachel throws something down on the bed; a stiff white envelope, and inside a single sheet of some quality-ass art-store paper, and on that paper a note:

> Ms. Amber,
> 
> You don’t know me, but we share an acquaintance in Mrs. St. Martin, a tenant of mine and a regular at my sister’s club, who’s given me to understand you’re looking for gainful employment and harbour ambitions toward Hollywood.
> 
> Having taken a personal interest in your wellbeing, Mrs. St. Martin suggested I may be in a position to assist you. I’ll be at the Bungalow on Wilshire Boulevard this Friday night. Meet me in the Study at ten p/m.
> 
> Therese Voerman  
>  CEO, Voerman P&D

“The Bungalow is shorefront. Flashy. Totally not a goth dive. I’m… fuck. You were right, Chloe. I’m sorry.”

“Confucius, he say… check yo’self before y’all wreck yo’self.”

“He did not say that, Chloe. I’ve _read_ Confucius.”

“Oh, why does that not surprise me.”

Rachel snorts. Friendly snort. Chloe can tell, ‘cause Rachel’s hugging her head, and her cheek’s right against Rachel’s sweaty abs and the seam of Rachel’s crop-top is in her eye but honestly, she doesn’t give that much of a shit. “You suck. But I love you for it.”

Chloe smiles, slipping her arms around Rachel’s back and squeezing her for a brief, sticky moment.

“C’mon. Let’s… take a shower, and hit the Place.”

“Oooh, retail therapy?”

“Well yeah. Gotta get you looking fancy for your dinner date with the lovely Ms. Voerman.”

“You’re not proposing what I think you’re proposing, are you?” Rachel chuckles, pushing Chloe away with a little shlup only audible if, like Chloe, you happen to have your ear pressed into her.

“Hell yes I am. If you’re gonna trade up, you’re gonna trade up, and if you don’t, I get to walk home with you. You sexy thang.” Chloe bounces her eyebrows salaciously. Rachel flaps her hands into Chloe’s shoulders and laughs, and she’s still laughing when Chloe gets up and pushes her into the shower and shuts the door behind them.

_Thank fuck for that._

Later - and later here means after they’ve chewed through Rachel’s blood money and a good chunk of Chloe’s pay on an eighty dollar dress Rachel crosses her heart and swears she’ll return Saturday morning, maybe Sunday because damn does that one-strap blue look hot on her - they’re splitting cheap-n-cheerful enchiladas, and Chloe just about feels up to broaching the small matter of the plan.

“So…”

“So, ominous pause?”

“Would it be OK if I didn’t come with you tomorrow? I’ll be bushed from work, and the Bungalow… not gonna lie, it looks kinda basically not my scene at all, and, uh, I don’t know if you even need me there screwing up for you…”

“Chill, girlfriend.” Rachel ruffles Chloe’s hair - not top-down, but sneaking a hand up the nape of her neck. “If I’m honest? I want you on speed dial anyway, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case she turns out to be crazier than her sister. Or a serial killer, or a goddamn vampire or something.”

“Oh, sweet. So I get to ride in and get my Van Helsing on?”

“Aw. I took you for a Buffy girl.”

“Eh. Last few seasons, maybe…”

The last of the evening’s tension dissolves. Chloe can sleep tonight, and Rachel can impress the hell out of this Therese whoever-she-is, and everything can turn out fine.

Right?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by a spoonless week of wanting to write but having five times my usual editing workload, by a staggering amount of tea, and by the following selection of tunes: ‘A chaos of desire’, a fine album by Black Tape For A Blue Girl, and ‘Fear’, an excellent album by King Dude.
> 
> Shit is now ready to Go Down.


	7. livin' it up at the hotel california

 

> FROM: Regency PR  
>  TO: Voerman Properties  
>  BCC: Regency HR  
>  SUBJECT: Re. Personnel Expansion
> 
> Ms. Voerman,
> 
> Despite your eloquent submission, and our recognition of your commitment to our organisational community throughout a turbulent period in its development, we must continue to recommend that your planned expansion take place along the lines previously negotiated with this office, in order to maintain the proper public relations climate and the necessary care we must take regarding human resources. We look forward to meeting your nominated candidate in due course.
> 
> Your sister is encouraged to present her own, independent case for expansion. Q4 2014 is recommended, as the tenth anniversary of our working relationship is likely to merit commemoration.
> 
> (Privately, I might add that an application prior to this date is unlikely to succeed.)
> 
> Best,
> 
> — Jennifer Pale  
>  — Regency PR  
>  — W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA
> 
> * * *
> 
> FROM: jeanette@sm-aslyum.com  
>  TO: bertram@schreck.net  
>  SUBJECT: Re: Freaky Friday
> 
> B, honey! (do you see what i did there? i see what YOU did. nasty boy. <3)
> 
> Sorry, but I can’t come out to play: I’m on lockdown ‘cause Her Majesty’s doing a THING with some GIRL (and i couldn’t be prouder, babe, we’re finally rubbing off on her!)
> 
> I’ll see if I can swing a weekender for you, but I need you to do something for J’n’T before T’n’A. Maxi-millions says no dice on T’s girlfriend’s girlfriend, and I know she works at your end of town. Be a sweetie-pie, B, and get her out of the way Friday night?
> 
> Lust and kisses!
> 
> — Jeannie
> 
> * * *
> 
> FROM: B  
>  TO: Tommy Sears  
>  SUBJECT: Health and Safety
> 
> Tommy. Been looking into your new girl. Hate to say I was right, but I was right: she’s caught some unwanted attention. Nothing I can’t handle, but get her (and yourselves) out of Santa Monica tomorrow night while I clear up her shit.

 

* * *

 

“I ain’t mad, Chloe,” says Tommy, leaning over the desk. He’s put his jacket on, so it must be serious, and he’s started smoking already, so he must have been up early. It’s only been a week or two, but Chloe’s learned to read her boss and he’s not exactly the Enigma machine anyway. “I know Thunder was mixed up in some bad shit, and I know you know Thunder, and it ain’t rocket science from there. I just wanna know what’s hanging over you and your girl that made you run down here in the first place.”

It’s too early in the morning for this. Staying up until midnight for Rachel’s essential interview prep/retail therapy/anger management had not been strictly tactical, and there was probably a long night ahead. Whether it was a good night or not would depend on Rachel. Something had to.

“Dude, I don’t know what to tell you. The last big thing to happen in Arcadia Bay was this rich kid from our old school wigging out and killing a junior, and that was nothing to do with us. All our shit went down in two thousand ten. Old news.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You serious? This is, like, a two coffee story, minimum.”

Tommy is serious, so Chloe tells him. The edited highlights, at least.

She tells him about bottling a guy at the old mill on the night of the last show (and Firewalk still fucking rock, by the way). She tells him how Rachel straight up saved her ass, and how she took the fall for Rachel the morning after and became Arcadia Bay’s one-hit theatrical wonder twelve hours later. She doesn’t mention the fire; three years later, that’s still kind of unreal. She does mention Sera, and Damon, and Frank, and James; how Rachel saved her from another beating and she saved Rachel from a blade and she got kind of… swept up in things.

She wasn’t going to tell him about the felony she dumped on Eliot, but it does feel good to get that out of her system at last, and she’s wondering if maybe that’s come out somehow and that’s what’s got Tommy so wired.

In other words, she tells him… most of the truth.

They’re walking, talking and working while they go through all this. As predicted, they’re at the bottom of their second coffee by the time they’re done. That and the effort of gutting a 2002 Civic clear her head a little, just in time for Thunder to wander in with a Chinese takeout for them and need catching up.

Chloe rolls her eyes, but whatever, she’s got the story on her mind now anyway, and it all comes out this time: before she knows it she’s fast-forwarding through leaving the Bay and into last night and how she flipped her shit at Rachel over something as dumb as having to work for a living. By the end of _that_ go around, both the Sears brothers are shaking their heads.

“You know what I don’t get?” Tommy says, at the end of it all.

“Laid much these days?”

There’s a pause, while Tommy throws some shade at his little brother.

“ _No_. I don’t get why in hell you stay with her. I mean, I got _divorced_ over less than that. This girl’s made a dropout, a felon and a fuckin’ runaway outta you. She can’t be _that_ good a lay, can she?”

“A: she can. B: how come you care anyway? I just work for you. Didn’t think couple’s counselling came with the pay.”

Tommy looks at Thunder and Thunder looks at Tommy and at more or less the same moment they both start saying something to the effect of “We’re kinda worried about you.” Chloe laughs out loud, and damn near drops her chow mein.

“Seriously, though,” says Tommy. “You work long hours in a gig like this so your girl can try to be an actress. It’s sweet - but you gotta be your own person too, y’know? Case in point: whattaya doin’ tonight?”

“Uh… OK, this is actually a bad example, but Rachel’s got this interview with some bigshot theater investor, and she’s kinda creeped out, so she asked me to…”

“There you fuckin’ have it.” Tommy slaps the side of the cabin - boom, and possibly crack somewhere in the doorframe. “When was the last time you did something for _you_?”

“Uh… I…”

Tommy’s tapping his feet. Thunder’s looking amused, through a mouthful of noodles. Chloe’s brain’s gone into freefall. When _did_ she last do something without fitting it in around what Rachel was doing, what Rachel wanted to do, whether Rachel was up for it? D &D, before Steph graduated and fucked off to Portland? A fucking year ago? And that didn’t count: it was definitely ‘something to do when Rachel was rehearsing’…

“Can’t wait all day, tank girl,” says Thunder, between mouthfuls.

“Shit. I…”

Chloe’s head flops back against the crappy office couch, and the Sears brothers share a significant glance.

“Look. Come out for a drink tonight. You’ve been here two weeks and you ain't fucked up too hard yet. Gotta be good for a celebration, right?”

“No fucking way. I promised Rachel I’d be on call.”

“For what?” Thunder stabs his chopsticks into the depths of his carton and raises his eyebrows at Chloe. “You think she’s gonna need rescuing from a pile of cash in a fancy suit?”

“She just wants to know I’ll be there…”

“You will be. What time’s this thing?”

“Uh. Ten.”

“Right. So how’s about this. You text her, say you’re working a little late, we go out for a drink, _drinks_ _one_ , and we get your ass back home a little after ten.”

“One fuckin’ drink.” Tommy smirks at her, the thinnest crack in his ground-in frown.

Chloe groans and rolls her eyes and fights the urge to throw prawn crackers at the both of them. “OK, fine. One drink. But we drive there. And you’re buying. And if this Voerman chick turns out to be a serial killer or something, you two are my wingmen. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

“By the way,” Thunder adds, “we don’t shit where we eat, so we’re going downtown to this bar. Other side of Skid Row. It’s… well. You’ll like it.”

* * *

Moore’s is the kind of not-fancy that’s secretly fancy, the kind of gentrified you get when someone’s spent a lot of money on ‘vintage’ decor that would be merely ‘crappy’ in the places it was bought from. There are two branches, and you can tell a lot about someone by the one they prefer. The Santa Monica Moore’s - the original - is a converted warehouse with pool hall delusions - wide tables with their individual overhead lights, and a lot of dark corners. The Hollywood Moore’s - the success story - is smaller, snugger, all leather sofas and low chairs and a black ceiling on which a permanent night sky is projected.

Nadia’s at home in both. Vandal can’t stand either, and she has to stifle a laugh when he arrives in shabby coat and sunglasses, like he’s hiding from the sunlight. He’s absurd when he’s out of his element, but she can’t let herself forget that he’s also _dangerous_.

He takes off his ridiculous wraparounds and looks around with an undisguised sneer, stalks across the café to place his order and plants himself in the armchair opposite Nadia’s without bothering to shuck off his coat.

“Why do we have to do this _here_?”

“Because you work nights every night, and I’m on the leash after sunset for god-knows-how-long. And… oh, I don’t know, I just felt like feeling normal for a change.”

“Can’t say _I’ve_ ever had the _pleasure_.” He looks around, raising his eyebrows and giving haughty, stare-down-his-nose nods to the furnishings. “How come you’re on the old choke chain all of a sudden?”

Nadia drops her voice to answer; soft, conspiratorial, reeling his attention back in. “I can’t decide if it’s just Mira being a bitch or if there’s really something up. They keep talking about something on the other side, and they’re going nuts about it, and I’m basically just… fetching and carrying for them. It’s so… frustrating. I’ve given my whole life to this work, and… I want to _help_ , you know?”

“Well, if charity’s burning a hole in your soul, let vice appeal to virtue and do me a favour.” A grubby hand retrieves a paper bag from his pocket, sets it down on the table and fills itself with a cheese steak sandwich that’s just arrived.

“You know, mother always told me not to accept sweets from strange men.”

“Bit _late_ for that now. And you’ve got to be sweet for both of us.”

Nadia snorts over the rim of her latté and takes a sip before she deigns to peek inside the bag. A capped syringe, full of - well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what red fluid _that_ might be.

“What’s so special about this one?”

“That’s what I need _you_ to tell me. Queen Bitch took a hit off this and she’s been acting out ever since. I’m used to the cold shoulder, but she’s usually too _squeamish_ to handle her own food; ‘cept _this_ stuff she’s all over, won’t have me in the room while she takes her tipple.”

“This isn’t exactly my remit, Vandal. You’re the… specialist, here.”

“No, but at least you get _told_ things. And what _else_ am I to do? Throw myself on the mercy of the Wizards of Fifth Street? They’d turn my brains to straw soon as look at me, and I ain’t got a heart or courage to begin with.” Vandal takes a scowling bite from his breakfast and adds, with his mouth full, what sounds like “you’re the only _friend_ I’ve got.”

“I’m flattered. What else is up with Ther… the Queen Bitch?”

“Spaced out. Untidy. _Thirsty_. Obsessed with _this_ little donor. If I didn’t know better I’d swear she was _addicted_.”

“She may well be, if she’s… taking… from an addict. Mira let slip once that some intoxicants… stick around.”

“Mmm. Wouldn’t rule it out normally, but I _know_ this girl, and she doesn’t strike me as a junkie. A dabbler, maybe, in the fields, but all she’s _truly_ hooked on is herself.”

“The only other thing I can think of, then, is…” Nadia trails off while a couple push past their table and a barista heads the other way, then resumes: “… witch blood.”

“I _beg_ yours?”

“Go back far enough in my family’s history and you’ll find witches before you find…”

“Kindred.” Venom seems to drip through the word.

“Right. And, as legend has it, a witch bleeds just like anyone else on Earth, only it’s… powerful stuff. Think vampire LSD, centuries before Leary.”

“Well, _fancy_ that.” Vandal licks his fingers clean - the sandwich is long gone, crammed down every time Nadia’s talking. “You learn something new every day.”

“I’ve only _heard_ about this, you realise. There may not be anything to it.”

“Consider who we work for, sweetheart; can we _afford_ to disbelieve?”

“I’m just saying, what we really need is…”

An idea enters Nadia’s head. It’s a nasty, treacherous, insidious idea, and the Blood roils and pulses in her at the very thought of it, but nonetheless, a sick toothy grin spreads across her face.

“You know what? I think I _can_ help you. Provided I can keep this.”

Vandal grins back at her. “This sounds like a _plan_.”

* * *

Time passes, and sure enough, they do intend to keep Chloe working until at least eight, so at least she doesn’t have to lie. Not exactly. She calls at six and swears she’ll be out by ten and wishes Rachel a fucking universe of good luck and either way, she’ll be there when Rachel’s done.

By eight-fifteen they’re out of the gate and heading downtown, piled into Tommy’s car, Chloe turned sideways in the back seat ‘cause both of them are legroom hogs. By eight-forty they’re turning off I-10 and looping around to park beside a squat two-storey building, the only one in a sprawling morass of warehouses and shabby-looking squats that has any sort of pretence of business.

Chloe scrabbles around to get a better view. It’s ugly. Heavy steel shutters. Grimy windows. Decaying brickwork. One massive door that looks built to take a battering ram. Above it, an underlit and underpainted sign, stark black on white.

THE LAST ROUND

Something about the name sends a shiver down Chloe’s spine. Like she’s heard it before somewhere. Deja vu for a place she knows she’s never been.

This will either be the coolest place she’s been in months, or a complete fucking dive.

Once the door swings open and the wall of [sound](https://youtu.be/zOjhkEmEmUI?t=4m35s) and stink hits her, Chloe decides it’s both.

The main bar’s drab, and it is gloomy, and it is exactly the way every biker bar on God’s clean Earth should be. Neon above, yellowish underlights below, flickering old signs and frayed leather stools. Up some steps and to the right; diner-style booths in a row. Past the bar; dark mysterious stairwell leading up, fruit machine, jukebox in the corner. Low light, low dive. Pronounced smell of weed and whisky. Fucking A.

The bouncer’s a black guy in fatigues, with that strung out look Chloe associates with trouble of the Madsen kind. He gives her the stink-eye and she gives it right back, but Thunder nods at him and he nods at Thunder and it’s all good, apparently. The boys rustle her up to the bar and sit her down and there’s a row of three murky bourbon glasses in front of them before Chloe’s even had the chance to check out the taps. Tommy pounds his, snorts contentedly, and makes his way over to the fruit machine. Thunder knocks his back a little more genteely and orders a quart jug.

“That ‘just one drink’ fuckin’ evaporated, then,” Chloe says aloud to no-one in particular, sniffing hers and figuring ‘when in Rome’ and downing it in two goes. The afterburn’s harsh, chasing itself around her lips and throat - she leans back, looks at the ceiling, and gives a long _whoooo_ of air, trying to breathe out the rush and get something else into her mouth for a minute and let the alcohol settle.

“If you change your mind, the next one’s on me.”

Chloe looks down to see who the hell said that.

Who the hell said that is: short, stacked, and striking. It’s not just that she’s the palest thing in a truly dark and dingy room; it’s the electric red hair and the ridiculous Che Guevara beret perched on top and the blatant lack of fucks in the set of her lips. She practically bounces onto the stool next to Chloe, and gives her a long look up and down.

“Nice. Good look. The hair suits you. I’m Damsel, by the way, and yes, that _is_ what my momma calls me.” A pale palm slams down on the bar and slides a bill across it. “Same again?”

“Uh… sure. Fuck it. Coke too, though. In the bottle. And I’m Chloe. And your hair fuckin’ rocks.”

The drinks arrive. Damsel wraps her hand around hers and downs it the second it arrives. Chloe’s a bit more restrained this time, alternating sips, trying to actually _taste_ the whisky and regretting it.

“C’mon, girl, just down it.”

“Nuh uh. No way. Absolutely no more than one more drink. I’ve gotta be home by ten.”

“Past your bedtime?” Damsel grins, leaning an elbow on the bar.

It’s weird. Chloe has an answer. She _doesn’t_ have a bedtime and she _does_ have a girlfriend. None of that finds its way to her lips, though. It’s like the words turn themselves around on their way down from her brain and what she actually _says_ is: “I’m… uh… only here ‘cause my boss is buying. No money. Yeah.”

Damsel follows her gaze to the fruit machine, looks back, and grins. Her teeth are bright white, and her lips are deep red, and Chloe can’t shake the thought of kissing her, or hold her gaze, or hide the flush that’s coming into her cheeks. “Well, you should stick around. Get on that machine after he’s gone and you’ll walk out of here loaded; he’s just feeding it. ‘Til then… I’m buying, OK?”

 _Nah, it’s cool, I’ve gotta go_ is what Chloe’s thinking she should say, but what comes out of her mouth is more like “You sure? Cool.”

“You having fun?” says Thunder. His voice sounds… distant. Like he’s at the other end of a corridor. Chloe has to think hard before she can piece the words together.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Chloe shakes her head, and before she quite knows what’s happening, her glass is mysteriously empty again, and she’s actually… feeling pretty good. The whisky burn is faint and hot and bitter but more bearable this time, and it settles in around her heart.

Thunder chuckles. He’s saying something - “remember who you’re here for,” it sounds like, but Chloe’s attention is falling, fading, sliding around the room and drawn down like living death and gravity to this girl with sparkling grey eyes.

“Don’t worry, man,” says Damsel. “She’s safe with me.”

Chloe nods. Emphatically. Maybe a little bit drunkenly? Little bit.

* * *

This is how the world looks, through Therese Voerman’s eyes.

There’s the ordinary world of material girls and boys. She sees (and hears, and smells, and ever so rarely touches and tastes) that world in excruciating detail, if she wants to. Her glasses are merely affectation: a prop, apropos of looking normal, giving her something that sets her apart from her sister. Here and now, in the intimacy of the Study’s yellow light, she can go to 20/20 and beyond. She can read the spines of the books to her right without squinting - with an effort, she can see brushstrokes on the paintings to her left. The jagged patterns on mismatched cushions would give her a splitting headache if she looked at them like this - so she keeps her gaze high, through the window, absently scanning the crowd on the outside deck.

If Therese was to blink, she could see the world in a different light. The press of bodies outside would cease to be a dull morass of forms, drowned in the early evening and the glare from the candles and lamps of the Study in which Therese waits, and watches, and preys. Each dimly lit human shape would be outlined in Technicolour - a hanging, hovering sheen that creeps along outlines and features and, to someone who’s made the effort to observe and recall, tells the story of the soul inside.

If Therese was to look down at her own hand, she’d see ivory skin wreathed in deep, desaturated reds and blues, mottled and swirled Van Gogh of the spirit, harder to pick out than any of the morsels outside.

Of course, she’d be cheating a little there, because she knows what she’s thinking, but the point stands. She’d know what was on her mind. She’d also know she wasn’t quite like them. It’s a fringe benefit: not one she knows how to exploit perfectly, but she knows there are stranger things than her abroad in Los Angeles, and she’s learned how to recognise a few.

She doesn’t do this. She doesn’t blink, or exert herself. Her ordinary vision is quite enough to survey the sleek black of her nails, the precise charcoal of her suit, the smooth line she smooths down harder.

Therese turns her gaze back to the window. Now she blinks, and scans the crowd, wondering if it’ll be obvious which one of them is her. Nobody whose blood does that to Therese of all people can look like some sort of ordinary person.

_Dear God._

Therese could have seen this girl coming a mile off. Was this what Jeanette had meant?

Most auras are surprisingly demure. They cling and flutter an inch or two from the skin at most. This one radiates a clear foot around its owner. Deep dark blue, pulsing lighter at the edges, and Lord, how the stars in it sparkle. It’s as though she wears a clear night sky, pulling it down and wrapping it around herself and trailing it through heavy Santa Monica air, fading it out into the world. A facade of calm, shimmering over deep suspicion.

Therese realises she’s staring. She blinks again.

The girl’s attractive enough, Therese supposes, as the bodies shift and she gets a clearer view through the Study doorway. The dress is a good choice; rich electric blue, darker than the feathers in her ear. For a superstitious moment Therese wonders if she knows, if she picked the outfit to match the colour of her soul.

_Ridiculous._

The girl hovers just outside the doorway, collecting herself before she walks in. It’s a little touch, but it speaks of talent; she doesn’t want to walk in here and show anything but confidence. Therese blinks again - and yes, the paler blue is settling down into her now. Self-possessed, certainly, and with an amount of self control, but the deep blue still spikes and shivers through the pale. There’s passion there too; she’s not as in control as she thinks she is.

_Delicious._

She steps forward, and she says “Ms. Voerman?” and Therese smiles thinly and says “Therese Voerman, yes. And you must be Rachel. Do sit down.”

Therese’s armchair is at one corner of the low table between them. Rachel keeps her distance - not quite directly opposite, on one side of the couch.

“To begin with,” Therese says, blinking herself back into the ordinary-five-senses world again, “tell me a little about yourself. Paige informs me you’re from Oregon, but your voice says otherwise. Long Beach, unless I’m mistaken?”

“That’s where I was born. My dad took a job as district attorney in this little town in Oregon three years ago. So, you know, being here’s not exactly ‘small town girl hitting the big city’. It’s more like coming home.”

It is _not_ easy to concentrate. Deep down inside Therese something far more primitive is stirring; something that wants to sink its fangs into this girl’s bared shoulder and devour her entirely and stare into those stars forever. Something that doesn’t understand that’s the one way Therese won’t get to keep her. But Therese has kept that Beast on a leash for more than eighty years, and it’s the tiniest effort of thought to push that passion outwards, bleed it through her words and into whoever hears them.

“With your father’s blessing? I don’t wish to pry for its own sake, you understand - merely establish an understanding of your situation.”

“Mmm… yes and no.” Rachel tilts her head, left and right, weighing up the idea. “I don’t think he objects. But I don’t care either way. There’s some history there.”

“Mm-hmm. And your plans?”

“Oh, God. Climb Everest before I’m twenty. Make the A-list, come what may. Bank a million dollars.”

Therese allows herself a careful, indulgent smile. “Impressive. But in the _immediate_ sense?”

“Two weeks in and no callbacks. But I’ll keep trying.”

“Well, Ms. Amber, I can’t help you with Everest, but how would two out of three suit you?” Therese holds up a forestalling hand - for whose benefit she’s not entirely sure. “I want you to understand what I’m not proposing here. I’m not interested in creating a nine days’ wonder: a few starring roles, the press saying ‘so much promise for one so young’, and then gone in a flash of heroin and fast cars. I make long term investments: modelling and movies while you can, building a theatrical career, and in the long run, becoming something of a _protégée_. I won’t be able to do this forever, after all…”

“Which sounds…” Rachel hesitates, and Therese doesn’t need _powers_ to perceive the words hovering behind her lips, her light strobing as she struggles with herself. “Amazing. But _slightly_ too good to be true. And - it’s not like you _know_ me.”

This is not, strictly speaking, true. Therese is quite proud of her digital literacy; all right, she’s hardly the eldest Kindred in town, but she’s determined not to be fossilised before she’s a hundred years old, and she’s become halfway decent at cyber-stalking. Her affairs have been on hold for a night or two while she’s searched, refined, placed calls, made the right formal-sounding requests to the right people. There’s a surprising amount she does know about Rachel Dawn Amber; GPA, transcripts, a modest modelling portfolio, the ubiquitous social media, a run of glowing theatrical reviews. The toast of a small town, wandered into a place she could oh-so-easily just disappear. A perfect childe, if properly groomed - but for Therese to contaminate her blood, to give up the radiance that seems to flow through her… would be such a _waste_.

God, the agony of choice.

In the meantime, she can’t let the girl out of her sight.

“Of course not,” she says aloud, forcing herself to laugh as lightly as she can, to untense her knuckles, to make her heart beat and her face look passably alive. “That’s the purpose of this encounter. I’m looking for _someone_ who _might_ , conceivably, turn out to be you.” Smirking, Therese lets her glasses slip down her nose a little way and peers over the top. “Would you like a drink?”

* * *

The crowd, such as it is, is thinning out. Through the haze Chloe can hardly even read the clock: it’s not yet midnight, but that’s all she can really handle.

She’s not sure why they started making out, but it happened. Some asshole had put a dollar in the jukebox and laughed, and [the song](https://youtu.be/Y7VGOnV2QhU) had barely started playing before Damsel turned around and dragged her down and locked lips with her for so long Chloe had to catch her breath on the way back up.

> Here we are  
>  And I can't think from all the pills, hey  
>  Start the car and take me home  
>  Here we are  
>  And you’re too drunk to hear a word I say  
>  Start the car and take me home

They half-walk, half-dance into a booth. Chloe trips herself, ends up on her back on the leather seat, watching the lights blur and whirl around a head of glossy red hair. So fake, but somehow so fucking right too, turning fiery orange as it catches the neon glow… it’s like the only thing she can see, the only thing she can feel.

> Here I am  
>  And I can't seem to see straight  
>  But I'm too numb to feel right now  
>  And here I am  
>  Watching the clock that's ticking away my time  
>  I'm too numb to feel right now

For someone so tiny she’s hella strong - Chloe puts up a token resistance, but it’s totally token. When the wave comes in, do the grains of sand on the beach really resist? Mostly, she’s fighting it ‘cause Damsel’s a fighter, like her, and she likes a woman who fucks back, so she figures so does Damsel…

Her head’s swimming. Maybe deep down in the core she thinks she’s cheating but maybe Rachel started it - Frank, she’s sure, and maybe she’s in a threesome with the Voerman twins right now - and maybe she just needs to get out from under Rachel’s shadow - and Damsel’s on her lap now, straddling her, smooth and taut and how can she be so cold when she’s so damn hot?

“You sure you wanna do this?” Damsel whispers, between kisses, looking her right in the eyes.

Sink or swim, little sandgrain.

> Just tonight, I will stay  
>  And we’ll throw it all away  
>  When the light hits your eyes  
>  It’s telling me I'm right  
>  And if I… I am through  
>  Then it’s all because of you  
>  Just tonight…

Chloe’s panting, coming up for air, but she manages to breathe out a "yes", and Damsel whispers "good" back at her, slipping the straps of Chloe’s wifebeater and bra off her shoulder in one go and running her tongue along Chloe’s collarbone and opening her mouth wide against her throat and then -

everything  
goes  
dark.

The room fades to grey. The music disappears, drowned out by a deafening thump-thump, thump-thump, a two-beats-to-the-bar rhythm, the only one that’s real. Chloe’s heartbeat drowns out everything, rising in her chest and ears and skin. Her head lolls back, blissed out, cupped in Damsel’s palm, and she shuts her eyes. What the fuck _is_ this? Her whole body’s… locked and edging, hovering back and forth over the thinnest of thin lines, every heartbeat another rush, another wave.

She’s never come like this in her life. Didn’t think it was possible. Not this hard, not this fast, not this often, not from barely any touch at all.

Chloe dies, and lives, and dies again, a dozen little deaths or more, in the dark. By the end she’s so dazed she doesn’t notice when Damsel pulls away and kisses the hollow at the base of her throat, soft and warm and wet. She doesn’t really notice much at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer than usual chapter: sorry about the longer than usual wait.  
> Also, another "hopefully you're still with me at the end of this" chapter...
> 
> Once again, wearing the Desert of Ghosts influence on my sleeve with this one. I love the coded language and business pretencions of the Camarilla Kindred in that fic, as well as the occasional chapter of emails, so I’ve shamelessly ripped them off for this one. 
> 
> I _think_ I have the timeline sorted out. Between my not being American and Before The Storm buggering around with everyone’s ages it was a bit of a shot in the dark.


End file.
